Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am trying to build on section 377 and ensure this process is used, because it is rarely used now, as the Minister of State will know. The CPO powers in this section, which are similar to those in the existing legislation, allow local authorities to buy up land needed for housing. This is good. The problem is this power is not being used. What I am seeking to ensure, therefore, is that it is used. I am not seeking to have people's lands acquired by compulsory purchase order at discounts below market values. The Kenny report referred to the existing land-use value plus a margin of 25% as a means of compensation.

I am not proposing that there would be an uplift of 25% on the market value because I do not think there is a need for this. If the purchase price is at the full market value, why would there be a need to do this? What I am seeking, however, is a situation where local authorities and municipalities would be planning ahead. This approach would be preferable to the current process of rezoning land, thereby causing an individual landowner to benefit from a windfall overnight by virtue of a public action, which makes no sense. That landowner will not have done a thing to earn the huge increase in value resulting from the rezoning. It is quite unlike many other activities where people contribute a great deal. I refer to people running small businesses, for example. They put their blood, sweat and tears into any kind of profit they try to generate, as do their staff. It is not just the person running the business who is involved in generating the profit.

In respect of windfall profits generated from land rezonings, no effort is put in to achieve them. It results from a public planning function. We are relatively unique in this regard because we are one of the few countries that just gifts these windfalls to landowners in this fashion. I have given examples of other countries that do this very differently, where the public authorities buy up the land when it is in agricultural use, rezone it and then put in the infrastructure. All the public components that increase the value of the land are put in by the public authorities concerned. They ensure the costs in that regard are captured and not passed on to someone trying to buy a home. Any excess uplift funds, indeed, are then used to fund much-needed infrastructure and amenities.

Not only does this approach work, but the programme for Government praises it and cites where it is used in Vienna as a model we should be employing here. Vienna, of course, is probably one of the only cities in Europe that, apart from the period of the Nazi occupation, has had a council that has had almost 100 years of leadership by a social democrat party. Perhaps this situation is related to the fact that the city now has such affordable housing. There is also the fact that measures of this type are not only undertaken extensively but undertaken well.

The Minister of State has not said anything in this context. The only thing he has said that I agree with is that where this is done, where land is assembled by local authorities, it does work very well. The point, however, is that we should be doing this at scale. A local authority can assemble the required land that can then be sold on to the LDA, a not-for-profit housing body or whomever. It is not the case that the local authority must undertake the whole process. What is the point, though, in having the housing strategy but then not having the land needed to deliver it? We are, as a result, going to be caught for decades now with these great housing strategies, hopefully, if they are done right, but we are not going to meet the needs in the housing strategy if we are simply leaving the assembling of land to the luck of the private market. Adding insult to injury, then, is the fact that people trying to buy or rent homes will be paying a premium because some land speculator has been able to invest in land, buy it up when it was zoned as agricultural land and then get it rezoned. Some such speculators sit on the land for years during this process.