Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

My colleagues, Deputies Ó Caoláin and Ó Snodaigh, have already spoken in support of this motion. I will deal with the demand in the motion for the implementation of the Kenny report.

I noted the misleading comments of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche on the Kenny report during his ill-tempered contribution to the debate yesterday. He is clearly hurt by the wording of the motion.

Sinn Féin's position on this matter is that where there are unmet housing needs, the local authority must have the ability to acquire land at below market value to address chronic social housing shortages and to provide land at reasonable cost to those currently being priced out of the housing market. Local authorities should be able to acquire land at existing use value or existing use value plus a stipulated percentage as outlined in the Kenny report.

The recommendations of the Kenny report were a matter of extensive discussion and consideration by the Oireachtas All Party Committee on the Constitution of which I am a member. The ninth progress report of that committee made a number of significant recommendations on the capping of land prices in line with the Kenny report and concluded that it would be constitutional to implement the Kenny report.

In its conclusion the committee stated:

The committee is of the view that, having regard to modern case law, it is very likely that the major elements of the Kenny Report — namely that land required for development by local authorities be compulsorily acquired at existing use value plus 25% — would not be found to be unconstitutional.

It continued:

Indeed, it may be that in certain respects, the Kenny Report was too conservative, since there seems no necessity that either the act of designating the lands in question which are to be the subject of price control or the payment of compensation to the landowners thereby affected would require to be performed by a High Court judge.

In its submission to the committee, Sinn Féin pointed out that the finding by Costello J. in Hempenstall v. Minister for the Environment, 1994, that "a change in the law which has the effect of reducing property values cannot in itself amount to infringement of constitutionally protected property rights". This supports the view that compensation based on existing use value or existing use value plus a stipulated percentage as outlined in the Kenny report is constitutional. Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000 was tested in the Supreme Court and found to be constitutionally sound. However, the Minister proceeded to gut this provision to suit developers.

It is time the Government stopped hiding behind imagined constitutional problems when seeking to justify its failure to bring forward legislation to control the price of building land. Such legislation should be brought forward and tested legally as was done with section V of the Planning and Development Act 2000. We could make the same criticism with regard to the failure to bring forward legislation to abolish ground rents.

The Government has, to date, failed to make a substantial response to the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on the Constitution report on property rights. It has not indicated whether it accepts its recommendations. The Taoiseach may have been only attempting to kick to touch the whole debate about the escalation of house prices when he asked the all-party committee to look into the matter. The report the committee produced made a number of significant recommendations on the capping of land prices in line with the Kenny report of 1973. We must ask why the committee report has now joined the Kenny report gathering dust on a shelf in a Government office. We all know the reason. The Government would rather pander to developers than deal with low income families living in squalor with urgent housing needs.

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