Forty-first Amendment of the Constitution (Right to Housing) Bill 2026: Second Stage [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01 ============================================================ Pádraig Rice (SD), Cork South-Central I, too, would like to congratulate my colleague Deputy Hearne on tabling this proposal. It is an important one and an important debate. I am disappointed that the Minister did not stay to respond to the debate. We have had a good discussion. Time and again, Ministers do not engage with the substance of the debate in the House and do not stay to respond to the points made by the Opposition. Far too often, it feels like we are shouting into a void and they are not listening or responding to the key issues we put before them. It was remarkable to hear the Minister talk down public investment in housing the week before a budget. He talked about the State not being able to provide all the housing the country needs. We need the Minister to talk up investment in public housing and try to deliver more public housing for people. Last week, a woman came to my clinic. She is living in her car. I got a flashback to 15 years ago when I was the welfare officer in the students' union of UCC and knew a student who was living in their car. It reminded me that nothing is changing. It is just getting worse, day after day, month after month and year after year. We need a radical change of direction and a change in policy. We fundamentally need a right to housing in the Constitution. I was concerned when the Minister described this as a distraction. At least he is not talking about turning a corner because the Government turned so many corners, it was going around in circles. It is good that we have this new description of it as a distraction instead. It has to be said that there is much that could be done to change things. There are simple things that could be done to provide housing. I did an event for students in UCC on Monday. Walking down College Road, within a stone's throw of the college, I saw a boarded-up house. That is one of the areas of Cork city where there is the most demand for housing. There is a boarded-op house on College Road. There is a house in Ballyphehane, just down the road from my house, that is boarded up. It was boarded up two years ago. I look at it every day when I go for a walk. The same council house is still boarded up two years later. It says to me and the people living in my community that the Government does not care. It does not give a damn about the people in that community, including the woman living in her car. They could have access to housing and a fundamental right to housing. We know that a constitutional right to housing would provide a clear floor of protection in respect of access to basic, adequate housing and would provide recognition that a home is central to the dignity of each person. It would provide a legal mechanism for citizens to vindicate their right to housing before the courts. It would oblige the State to reasonably protect and fulfil the right in the spirit of the obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and provide a ready-made legal framework by which they could progressively realise the right to housing and by which it could be pursued. It would provide a safeguard against which all State housing policy and decision-making could be measured and challenged. It is fundamentally important that we reframe our housing policy to put a rights-based focus on it and provide people with that basic right to adequate housing because it is crucial to the dignity of every individual in the State. What kind of Republic is this? Why kind of Republic does the Minister of State want? I know I want a Republic of equals, where everybody is treated equally, with dignity and respect. Core to that is providing access to basic services, supports and housing. We must build a social floor below which nobody is allowed to fall. We have repeatedly heard that over a ten-year period, 13 Bills were proposed by the Government on the basis of concerns around property rights, according to research by the Oireachtas. Time and again, the property rights in the Constitution trump people's right to housing. A right to housing would provide some balance in the Constitution to those private property rights. As was referenced earlier, in 2014, the Convention on the Constitution recommended that the Constitution be amended to include economic, social and cultural rights, including a right to housing. The people are on side, as was very evident in those discussions at the Convention on the Constitution. If you put this proposal to a referendum, an overwhelming majority of people would vote in favour of it, and that is what the Government is afraid of. We have seen this right around the world. Over 80 countries have a right to housing in the constitution, including Belgium, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Many countries already do this and we should do it too. We know that a right to housing would not mean a key to a home for everybody the day after the referendum. However, it would require the State in its policies and decisions to ask reasonably to ensure people have access to housing. It is not just the Convention on the Constitution that has called for the right. The Ombudsman for Children has called on the Government to bring forward a referendum to put a right to housing in the Constitution and to address the homelessness crisis that is a matter of urgency. Far too many children in this State are growing up in homelessness and growing up in hotel rooms and bed and breakfast accommodation. We know that is damaging their development. We all know that. We know it is going to have a lifelong impact on these children who are growing up in poverty. We know we have that situation because of decisions taken by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over decades. Clear policy choices were made to reduce the number of social houses in the 1980s and 1990s. We decided to rely on the private market and the social housing stock collapsed. The peak for social housing was in the 1970s. The Minister says we are now building more, but it is not comparable when we consider the percentage of our population in need. We must get back to investing far more in social and affordable housing. Other countries do this. They provide people with adequate housing and we can do that too. One of the interesting things about this debate is the unity on the left in this Parliament on this issue. All of the parties have talked about their support for the right to housing. It is just the members of the Government, those in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the Independents who support this Government, who are opposing that right and who do not want to see that fundamental change to deliver housing for our people, to build a social floor beneath which no one is allowed to fall and to ensure no child grows up in homelessness. We have a different vision for this country. We want to see a more equal, fairer and better Ireland. I urge the Government to rethink its approach. I urge Fianna Fáil, in particular, to go back to its roots and go back to where it was not too long ago in terms of prioritising social housing and the basic services that should be delivered for people in this country. As Deputy Gibney said, Fianna Fáil is being lurched to the right by Fine Gael and needs to change tack. Crucially, I ask the Government not to be afraid of the people. Put this referendum to the people and we will get the result we need. When we get that referendum and the right to housing, we can start to change this country for the better. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-10-01