Letters

Constitution and a right to housing

Turning Bunreacht na hÉireann into a shopping list of virtue signals

Sat Aug 05 2023 - 00:14

Sir, – Anthony Layng (Letters, August 4th) concedes that a constitutional amendment on housing won’t solve the housing crisis, but says it will act as “a standing democratic instruction to the government of the day” to give priority to the issue. Mr Layng should reflect on how similar “democratic instructions” in the Constitution have fared in the past.

The original 1937 Constitution included the previous Articles 2 and 3 which defined the “national territory” as all 32 counties on the island, and mandated the State to work towards its “re-integration”. When those articles were replaced in 1998 we were no closer to unity than we had been six decades earlier, and arguably we were much further from it due to the counterproductive actions of the governments led by Éamon de Valera who introduced those provisions in the first place.

The Constitution also says that Irish is the “national language” and the “first official language” of the State, and yet successive governments have failed abysmally to promote its growth, and have actively damaged it by maintaining the nonsense policy of compulsory Irish in schools.

In 1979, the people amended the Constitution to extend the Seanad franchise to all third-level graduates. This “democratic instruction” has been ignored by all 19 governments in the intervening 44 years, and will only be acted on now as a result of the intervention of the Supreme Court in the recent Heneghan case.

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In 1983, the people overwhelmingly issued a “democratic instruction” that the right to life of unborn children should be protected. Rather than respecting this right, successive governments waged war on it, chipping away at it until its eventual abolition in 2018.

During that referendum we were told that abortion was too complex an issue to be included in the Constitution, and yet the very same people who gave us that pious lecture are now telling us that national policy on housing – an issue of dizzying complexity – ought to be written into the Constitution.

The way to issue a “democratic instruction” to the government isn’t to turn Bunreacht na hÉireann into a shopping list of virtue signals on the controversies of the day, but by voting in TDs who are committed to a platform of policies on housing we support, and voting out those who are not. That’s real democracy. – Yours, etc,

BARRY WALSH,

Dublin 3.

Sir, – Reports in The Irish Times this week suggest that the Government’s Housing Commission is proposing to put a right to be housed into the fundamental rights section of the Constitution (News, July 31st). If the people adopt this in a referendum then the Supreme Court would become the final arbiter on housing policy for our country, deciding the extent and limits of this new justiciable right. Against the backdrop of the current housing crisis, this appears attractive, at first sight. A quick fix that depoliticises the issue and gives the individual citizen the ability to get a ruling on his or her housing needs from the court, with any order made by the court enforceable against the State authorities. An added bonus is that we wouldn’t have to hear tiresome debates between Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien and Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin. Yet the courts have limited expertise in this subject which has been at the centre of political debate for years. Housing policy is the stuff of politics and the Oireachtas is the place to argue how much of our resources should be devoted to housing. The proposal would undermine democracy and elevate housing above healthcare, social welfare and other needs. I, for one, prefer elected politicians deciding public policy in social and economic affairs, not unelected judges. It is a well-meaning proposal but should be regarded as a kite flown in the silly season. – Yours, etc,

CIARAN O’MARA,

Booterstown,

Co Dublin.