Housing referendum would be based on ‘gross untruth’
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Michael McDowell
Proposals to enshrine the right to housing in the Constitution are based on a “gross untruth” and are not necessary to tackle the housing crisis, barrister and politician, Michael McDowell has said.
Writing in The Irish Times, the senator and former justice minister and attorney general said such a proposal implies “that there is something in the Constitution that is holding back the government’s capacity to provide housing in greater quantity and at affordable prices”.
However, he said: “Anyone who looks at the private property provisions of the 1937 Constitution will find nothing there that suggests that the present Government is inhibited by the terms of our basic law from doing things that it actually wants to do in tackling the undersupply of housing.”
A referendum on housing forms part of the programme for government and is being explored by the Housing Commission established early this year.
A two-day conference was hosted by UCD School of Law in May to feed into that process, hearing from a range of Irish and international experts.
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