Written Submissions to the Housing Commission Established by the Irish Government

Abstract

I have been invited by the Housing Commission to give evidence to aid their work in examining the “complex constitutional questions arising…around potential wording for an amendment to the Constitution” in respect of housing and property rights.

My submissions address the following questions:

(i) How does the Constitution in its current form inhibit the State’s response to the housing crisis?
(ii) Has the protection afforded to private property rights been overestimated?

I argue that the Constitution in its current form and as interpreted by the Superior Courts does not inhibit the Government and Oireachtas from taking whatever legislative steps are necessary to address Ireland's housing issues. I argue that political estimations of the legal protection afforded by the Constitution's private property rights provisions are consequently widely overstated.

I consider how the Government has come to internalize a crabbed and skewed understanding of the scope of the Oireachtas' power to regulate property rights for the Common Good and suggest that legal advice provided by the Attorney General's Office has likely had a considerable role in this process.