Around about this time yesterday morning, Newstalk published a headline that, make no bones about it, is just about the dictionary definition of “fake news”:
How the Government could mandate the use of holiday homes for refugees. @NTBreakfasthttps://t.co/VxMTPbXvdy
— NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) March 14, 2022
Let’s be absolutely clear about this: The Government has the power to ask people to consider making their holiday homes available to refugees. It may well have the power to provide financial incentives to people, in return for making their holiday homes available. In a very extreme case, it might be able to issue a compulsory purchase order for somebody’s holiday home – subject to long court cases and appeals.
What it cannot do, under any circumstances, is to “mandate” people to make their holiday homes available for refugees. Or, indeed, for any other purpose.
The right to private property is enshrined in the Irish constitution, in 43.1:
ARTICLE 43
1 1° The State acknowledges that man, in virtue of his rational being, has the natural right, antecedent to positive law, to the private ownership of external goods.
2° The State accordingly guarantees to pass no law attempting to abolish the right of private ownership or the general right to transfer, bequeath, and inherit property.
The Government simply does not have the power to take your property, and hand the keys to somebody else for their use. Indeed, people who pay attention to the housing crisis will have noticed that, for some years, this fact has been a bugbear for those on the left who insist that the state really should have that power, to deal with the homelessness crisis. In fact, in 2020, People before Profit published a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed the Government to do just that. It was not passed beyond the second stage in the Dáil, there was no referendum on it, and the position remains unchanged. This is not something that the Government can do.
There are, of course, those who it will suit to pretend that this is something that Government might do, regardless, as part of some “plan”. That argument is usually made with some claim about the covid pandemic in tow: “Well, they didn’t have the right to ban people from attending mass, either, and that didn’t stop them”
The difference here is one of politics and practicality: The mass ban, for all that it might be argued to have been unconstitutional, was both practical, and widely popular when enacted. It fitted in with a wider set of restrictions on people’s movements designed and presented as a way to save lives. It did not involve a financial loss to any citizen. And even that ban, people forget, was challenged in court, and then withdrawn. It has not seen the light of day since.
Seizing holiday homes, by contrast, would be a political disaster for politicians, whose main priority is and ever will be retaining support and votes. Many politicians own holiday homes themselves – the Taoiseach amongst them. The idea that the Government is going to pass a law which would involve seizing the property of TDs in violation of the constitution is just a non-runner.
Nor, for the record, has Government even made such a proposal. The Newstalk story itself points out that the idea came from one of Ireland’s endless supply of “independent experts”. Nevertheless, it was widely circulated yesterday as evidence of what might be coming “next”.
That story is evidence of nothing but irresponsible journalism. And it is notable that it comes from the same media outlets that warn endlessly about the rise of extremism. Which poses a question: Is a rise in extremism really a surprise, when mainstream media outlets are running stories that falsely claim that politicians are about to seize people’s homes?