Dr. Larry O'Connell:

If I miss some of the questions I ask the Deputy to highlight them for me. I will begin with CPO powers. What we found when we looked internationally is that CPOs comes in at the end and not at the start. What we are really trying to create is a process of engagement, whereby we start with better engagement with local authorities and people who own public land and we work through a process. The committee heard this from the Land Development Agency in its submission and discussion with it. What is clear internationally is that having CPO powers to get people to take the engagement seriously is important. It gets us to a discussion on the value of the land and trying to have the process. The Deputy is raising the spectre of somebody walking onto a piece of land and stating he or she will demand to CPO it and somebody else saying it is his or her view that it should be done at current market value and there is an inflated view about that. Something else that comes to bear in this discussion, as came up in the discussion the committee had with the Land Development Agency, is that affordability on the particular site will determine the actual value. If it is to be 100% affordable then the land will not have a huge market value. The particular figure worked out in the engagement becomes very important. The key for us with regard to CPO powers is that they enable the discussion and negotiation to have a different character.

On the question about agricultural land versus brownfield land, we fully agree and our report is very conscious of it. The focus is not agricultural land, it is brownfield land. It creates the wrong impression if we start to speak about agricultural land. The acute crisis is in built up urban areas where we need to get more development. This is the land we need to speak about.