Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2003

24th June 2003

A amendment to the Planning and Development Act 2000 to introduce measures to discourage land speculation

Mr. Cuffe: "In recent years there has been a remarkable increase in the prices paid for serviced land suitable for building and for potential building land near cities and towns in the State." While these words might appear appropriate today, they are not mine but are taken from the report of the Committee on the Price of Building Land, known as the Kenny report, which was submitted 30 years ago to the then Minister for Local Government, a youthful Deputy Robert Molloy. Sadly the report has sat on the shelf for the past 30 years and many of its fine recommendations have not been implemented.

Essentially, the Kenny report expressed concern at the profits accruing to developers from the sale of building land. The words used in 1973 are similar to those which could be used today to describe the position that pertains not only in the greater Dublin area, but also on the outskirts of many of our towns and cities.

It is wrong that, for the most part, the enormous profits from land rezoning accrue to a limited group of developers. While I will not use my position to name them, many media publications have referred to as few as a dozen developers who own much of the landbank, certainly around the greater Dublin area. It is wrong that a small group of people in society can own or gather together futures and options on lands in order to release it onto the market when and in the manner they so wish. By cutting from the loaf of a limited landbank at whims, this limited group of developers is, in essence, holding up the price of land and ensuring that the consumer, the purchaser and those who rent accommodation are held to ransom. This is wrong. Many of the recommendations of the Kenny report on local government still hold water and should be enacted.

Enormous pressure is exerted on local authorities during the making of development plans. In many ways, it is a akin to the contest between David and Goliath in that the forward planning and development sections of local authorities do not have the resources to compete with the finely-tuned submissions made by and on behalf of local landowners.

Often, it is only through the mechanism of freedom of information that we are able discover the kind of dialogue taking place between developers and the local authorities. Recently, during the current review of the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown development plan, I used this mechanism to discover some of the reasoning behind the phenomenal amount of rezoning being proposed in the plan. In particular, I queried the rezoning for housing of a large patch of land almost half way between the towns of Shankill and Bray. I was curious about the apparently arbitrary manner in which a large chunk of land in the middle of a green belt and half way between two towns would be zoned for development. When I used freedom of information legislation to find out what was going on, lo and behold, I found a file full of correspondence from the landowner, Marc Cochrane, and his agents to the local authority, essentially pertaining to the reasons the land in question should be rezoned.

While I am sure the development department and the forward planning section of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council considers planning criteria only in its reasoning on the rezoning of lands - certainly in the current development plan - I am curious as to the reason such a substantial amount of land is being proposed for rezoning. I wonder whether the views expressed in the simple submissions of ordinary citizens are listened to as carefully and clearly as submissions made by the owners of large landbanks. Local authorities and landowners, namely, the farmers who have perhaps been farming land for generations as opposed to those landowners who buy up large landbanks through speculation, come under enormous pressure from developers for the rezoning of land.

The rezoning of land is necessary in certain areas and for certain uses. It is wrong, however, that the profits from such rezoning should accrue principally to the developer, rather than the local authority concerned. We should take on board the very clear recommendations of the Kenny report of 30 years ago, which states that the acquisition of land by local authorities for resale to builders or to the ultimate purchasers can help to stabilise the price of land or, at least, to prevent it rising very rapidly.

I will conclude with one final quotation from the report where Mr. Justice John Kenny, the chairman of the committee which compiled it, quotes from the report of the Uthwatt committee in Britain. It states that the denser the population, the more intensive the use of land becomes in order that the limited area may be capable of furnishing the services required; the more complex the productive organisation of society, the more highly developed must be the control of land utilisation exercised by or on behalf of the community. This is a quote from the Uthwatt committee in Britain. The word and intent of that report, and the Kenny report, was to make land and housing available at affordable prices for the general population. I do not believe that is happening today. We need to look at that report again and implement it rather than continuing to flounder, obfuscate and fail to produce housing at affordable prices. I believe this legislation will help to provide land at affordable prices for the general community.