Human rights organisation Amnesty International has made fresh calls for a referendum on the right to housing in Ireland.
It is one of a number of issues highlighted by Amnesty International in its latest annual report, which also criticises the State's response to the past abuse of women and children in institutions.
The report mentions that concerns over the availability and affordability of housing have intensified, as it says that "record numbers of people experienced homelessness".
Amnesty International's interim director for human rights in Ireland Fiona Crowley has said any change to the Constitution needs to reflect Ireland's obligations.
"Any constitutional amendment needs to reflect Ireland's internationally legally binding obligations, which is a right to adequate and affordable housing, and this is set out in a convention that Ireland helped negotiate and, in fact, ratified decades ago," Ms Crowley said.
"So, the Government is perfectly aware of what the wording should be."
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, she said that unless the Government starts engaging substantively with the issue then there is scope for confusion around any amendment.
"Who wouldn’t want to have a right to housing in the Constitution as a bulwark against the existing right to property?" she said.
Ms Crowley said that what is needed is for "ordinary people who aren't landowners or landlords, to be put on the same footing, at the very least, so a constitutional right to housing would also ensure that, for instance, we would not have homeless asylum seekers on our streets".
"It's housing rights for everyone and the housing crisis is impacting everyone. And decades of Government inaction and failed housing plans have not solved anything," she added.
"So, putting the right in the Constitution would require Government to enact evidence-based housing laws and create evidence-based housing policy."
Protection for sex workers
Amnesty's report also looks at the issue of protection of sex workers. Ms Crowley said that the law in place since 2017 is not in effect protecting those workers, but is instead putting them at more risk.
She said that "far from protecting them, it is actually putting them at much higher risk of abuse and violence from the clients and from gardaí and that it makes them far less able to reach out to the gardaí for help or to trust the gardaí".
"The law needs to just remove consensual adult exchange of sexual services from the criminal law," Ms Crowley said.
"Sex work is not exploitation. It's not trafficking. All of those need to be in law and pursued through to prosecution.
"But sex work should not be criminalised. It just drives it into the shadows and makes it far, far less safe. And it does nothing to solve the social marginalisation and economic exclusion that leave many people to have no option but to engage in sex work.
Ms Crowley said Amnesty International is not concerned about buyers, or those who make a profit from sex work.
"We're concerned about the human rights and safety of sex workers themselves," she said.
"The simple fact is that the criminal law that we have here is harming them and not in any way giving them exit routes from sex work."
