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

I missed Deputy Cian O'Callaghan's contribution but I suspect our amendment, No. 195, is in a similar vein in that we believe the LDA, rather than being a mechanism to open up the public land bank to private interests, should be moving in the exact opposite direction.

It should aggressively seek to bring privately-owned land suitable for housing that is not being used, but is being hoarded and speculated on, into use. It should use aggressive compulsory purchase powers to take that land into use, force existing private owners to bring it into use or simply take it from them. Quite frankly, we need a body that is monitoring, like a hawk, the available zoned building land or, indeed, land that is not zoned but would be suitable for delivering public and affordable housing, and is pouncing on that land to ensure monopolistic control of the building land bank is not in the hands of a relatively small number of private owners, which is currently the situation.

The logic behind amendment No. 195 is to insert the use of compulsory powers into the Bill as a key part of what the LDA should be doing. The amendment should probably include buildings as well as land. I might reconsider that for our amendment on Report Stage because I presume the Government will not agree with it. The way in which empty property in the hands of private owners is just sat on for years and years on end is, frankly, obscene. It is staring communities throughout the country in the face that existing property is being sat on, is empty and is derelict or whatever, just to wait to see the value of it appreciate and decide strategically when or if it will be developed. That just should not be allowed. We should have an agency that goes after that property and land aggressively, to bring it into use for public and affordable housing.