Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I, too, want to press the Taoiseach on dates for the referendums on keeping water services and infrastructure in public ownership and on housing, both of which have been promised by the Government. The Government keeps echoing the mantra that housing is its biggest priority. The most severe social crisis facing the country, which it certainly is, is that hundreds of thousands of people, in one way or another, are impacted by this absolutely devastating housing crisis, whether that be by unaffordable house prices, mortgage interest hikes, the lack of public and affordable housing, the lack of rights for tenants or, worst of all, families, children and individuals being driven into and trapped in homelessness. Side by side with those issues, there are huge numbers of empty properties and extortionate rents are being charged that ordinary people cannot afford.

Before the Taoiseach says it, we know a referendum will not change all of that. However, time and again, the Government has cited the Constitution and legal concerns when saying why it cannot do certain things, such as dealing with vacant properties, controlling rents and a number of actions people have proposed that could help to address the crisis. Those legal obstacles need to be removed by making things clear and putting the right to housing into the Constitution. Is the Taoiseach going to do that before there is a general election, as he promised?

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