Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was going to ask a supplementary question on that point. If I understand it right, the discount to the State when purchasing Part V units is that the land is acquired at existing use value.

That establishes the principle that existing use value, in that context, is adequate compensation. For me this is a really significant point. Why would the State deviate from that as a principle? If somebody has a piece of land, he or she has two choices, one of which is to develop the land in accordance with the zoning and the planning permission, if he or she has planning permission, and make the return, which is fine. If that person is clearly unwilling to do that or is not able to for different reasons of finance or whatever, the State has this option of acquiring at existing use value. That would be a pretty heavy incentive for the owner of that land to develop because he or she would lose not just the future uplift in the value but might even lose a portion of what he or she had paid for the land, assuming that person had paid more than the existing land use value.

I am aware the witness is not a constitutional lawyer and I am not asking him to speculate on the legality of it, but from a planning point of view and with the public interest in mind, is a discount of 30% of the difference from the existing use value to the market value a fair deal for the taxpayer?