Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to discuss housing, which is an incredibly big problem for this country in many ways. Poor people live in poor areas. Poor housing policy intensifies social and economic disadvantage. We have problems with planning, which has been market- and developer-led for a long time. There is a shadow planning system whereby the big players observe a different set of rules. There is a particular rhetoric pertaining to the social good, but the reality is different. For a long time, this State has promoted social exclusion and segregation because it helped to keep property prices up. There was no interest in refurbishment and renewal. There is only interest in big sites because they are what the developers like and where they can make more money.

The State can play a part in addressing that issue. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, expressed yesterday some reservations about the site value tax which has been tossed around for the last while. This is at the core of a great many of our problems with housing in Ireland. It will be madness if the Government fails to address the issue. To provide a small example, I bought a fifth of an acre in 1997 for £150,000 but seven years later in 2004, I paid €5 million for a fifth of an acre. It was a 30-fold increase. That happened because the State is dominated by people who bank land and sell it when they think it is a good time to do so. They will hold on to it when it suits them. The notion of not taxing that asset which is growing in value is outrageous.

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