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

My amendment would make it an obligation. The Minister of State is saying that local authorities or the LDA higher can go higher; I am saying they must. The amendment would make it a requirement that they go higher and that it goes up to 50%.

It is interesting the constitutional issue has raised its head in this debate. One of the demands of Raise the Roof, which has been a long-standing demand of many of us in this House and of the housing movement, is that we need a constitutional amendment referendum on the right to housing precisely to address this issue. Legal opinion is divided on this but most constitutional legal experts will say there is no barrier, legally, to doing things because it does meet the rational objective, which is the provision of social and affordable housing which society needs and that is the definition, surely, of the common good as set out in the Constitution. What the Constitution currently says, which some of these far-right nut jobs do not seem to understand, is that it delimits the right to private property on the grounds of the common good, and it does so all the time. The idea that such a right would run foul of existing constitutional provisions is doubtful, in my opinion. That has been cited many times by the Government before doing things which did not require a referendum. The Government brought in RPZs and other measures which when they had been argued for previously were deemed to run foul of the Constitution but then it turned out they did not do so. Frankly, that is a bit spurious. Even if it was a barrier, however, then it should be combined. Let us remember the Government has committed to having a referendum on housing. That referendum should ensure that the State has the capacity to meet the common good and there could be no clearer definition of the common good than the provision of social and affordable housing for the people of this country.