Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

I rarely agree with everything my colleague, Deputy Mulcahy, says but I certainly concur with his remark that the global financial crisis contributed to the difficulties we are currently experiencing. In fairness to the Labour Party, over the past decade it has devoted significant time and effort to examining the problem of housing affordability and has put forward a number of commendable solutions which would have addressed some of the problems we now face if they had been implemented in a timely manner.

The problems which NAMA is intended to solve are complex and deserve detailed examination. The booming Celtic tiger economy contributed significantly by creating an upwards spiral in expectations, wages and house prices. In the white heat of that period, it was difficult to speak about the need to dampen down house prices. The demographic changes in the population contributed to price inflation in that an extraordinary bulge of young people reached the stage of home ownership. Indeed, the boom in birthrates which occurred last year may lead to a similar problem 20 years hence.

The ready availability of 100% loans from financial institutions contributed hugely to our difficulties. Our entry into the eurozone was also a factor. It is difficult for Ireland to act alone to dampen credit availability but we need to put the genie back into the bottle somehow.

I also wish to discuss the hype generated by the property pages of national newspapers. Property supplements were occasionally as large as the main newspaper. Some of us drew attention to this extraordinary development but too few saw the writing on the wall.

Tax breaks for developers contributed significantly to our current difficulties. Since they were first introduced in 1985, property-based tax incentives contributed substantially to the rise in property values. Corruption also played a part. The extraordinary emphasis on property and land rezoning by the two major parties during the boom years did not lead to significant social gain.

We are moving towards a planning Bill which will address the increase in the price of building land by implementing one of the measures recommended in the Kenny report. This report, which was published in 1973, makes for good reading because even back then there was disquiet over the major increases in the price of land and a strong belief that something had to be done. It is a reflection on successive Governments that we have had to wait this long before strong action was taken.

It is interesting to have a debate on the right price for building land and housing. Some would seek a return to the boom years of double digit increases, although I am not among them. Others hope the price of property will fall to half its current value but I am not convinced that would be in Ireland's best interest. Stability would certainly help, particularly for the younger generation. We have to find easier ways for young people to access the menu of housing options. However, we must also be careful not to see home ownership as the be all and end all because that attitude also contributed to house price increases.

Green Party members held a fascinating meeting in Athlone last week in which we discussed these issues. One of the participants at that gathering noted that we were holding our debate in a hotel which is 12 stories high and sits atop a four story basement car park. In the context of a debate on the planning we want to see in the future, it would be interesting to ask whether that kind of development represents what we want for our medium-sized towns. One of the results of the boom years was that a town such as Athlone contains a massive oversupply of hotels because of the overzoning carried out in the expectation that the goose would continue to lay golden eggs for generations to come. We have a few tools with which we can move away from that attitude. NAMA may well be one of them. We also must put in place much more rigorous and stronger planning policies, and that is a debate where there is not complete buy-in from all parties in the House. In the interventions that my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, has made in the development plans of some counties such as Monaghan and Mayo, I saw consternation from the elected members in those areas who felt that we should be having a considerable amount of land rezoned and should allow housing in most locations. That is not right. We must suck the development into the right areas, we must review the national spatial strategy and we must have more concentrated development of a much higher design quality. That is part of what must be done.

We also must put planning more closely at the heart of the NAMA legislation. There is a reference in the legislation to zoning criteria. We must move beyond that. I would like to see the phraseology in the preamble to the 2000 planning Act, which states that it is founded on the principles of proper planning and sustainable development, incorporated into part of the National Asset Management Agency legislation because planning criteria must be at the heart of the various criteria at which the new agency will look.

It is also crucial that we have the best international advice. I get a shiver down my spine when I see many of the agencies that were the poster boys for bad behaviour during the boom years in property sales being mentioned in the context of assisting NAMA in its endeavours. I would much rather have a dour Dutchman throwing up his hands in despair at the amount of rezoned land under the control of NAMA and telling us we must reduce this than have some of those names that featured on the front of the property pages suggesting to us that the price increases will start again and all will be well.

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