Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 14:

In page 8, line 19, after “public” to insert “and relevant private”.

All of these amendments are related in their logic. They propose that references to the Land Development Agency having powers in respect of public lands be extended to include private lands. I made many points earlier on about what a land development agency should be. It should not be a body that essentially opens the door and gives access to the public land bank to private capital. Rather, it should go in exactly the opposite direction. It should be a body that takes over the building land bank currently controlled by private speculators and developers in order to use it to deliver housing to meet housing needs, particularly the need for social and affordable housing. What I would like to see, and what these amendments aim to bring about, is an agency that essentially does what the Kenny report talked about. It should, in an aggressive way, take control of the bank of land for building that is currently largely privately held in order to deal with outrageous site costs and the hoarding of land and empty properties. This would be an agency which takes over land and property so that it cannot be hoarded or used for speculation and which would force that land and property into use with the social objective of delivering the housing that people need. The logic behind all of these various amendments is to include that emphasis on going in and taking control of the land bank that is currently privately held.