President Michael D Higgins has suggested the State might consider whether it should establish an enterprise agency which would act with the same "urgency" and enthusiasm of Enterprise Ireland to address the dysfunctional housing market.
The President told a conference in Dublin that the State's interventionist role must be adequate for circumstances that effect the cohesion of society.
He made his comments at the Croke Park Conference centre during a keynote address to the 30th anniversary conference of Social Justice Ireland.
The theme for the gathering is "Society Matters: Reconnecting People and the State".
He lamented that the already frayed connection had deteriorated further during the recent recession because the public purse has picked up the tab for loss-making financial institutions.
But he said the entrepreneurial activity of the State actively creates and shapes market outcomes.
He suggested that, at a time of acute housing shortage, when the most efficient use of the current stock of housing and residential land is not being made, "we might reflect whether an enterprise agency of similar character to those in other areas might not be warranted, released and resourced to play a role in the market, one that would show the same urgency and the same élan as IDA Ireland or Enterprise Ireland, show in their own activities".
He noted that the supply of residential building land here is fixed by nature but defined by the State's planning laws, and that "good planning with provision of housing is a necessary part of a social cohesion".
He added that some of the housing stock is empty.
He welcomed recent comments by members of the judiciary here on the challenge of balancing the just use of land for housing "with the absolutist claims of inviolable private title and usage".
President Higgins recalled that during the first 60 years of the history of the State, the Land Commission - first established by the British government in 1881 - continued its programme of intervention in agricultural land, compulsorily transferring underutilised lands to former tenants.
"The interventionist role of the State was accepted," he said adding that that role "has to be adequate for circumstances that change, circumstances that affect the cohesion of society at home and in the European Union".
President Higgins welcomed the decision of the European Council, Commission and Parliament last week to proclaim the European Pillar of Social Rights in the Swedish city of Gothenburg and particularly its inclusion of a right to housing.
"And now I hope that we can look forward, throughout the European Union, to leadership and an ambition equal to the needs of our citizens and demands of the present moment," he said.
