Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Government is not challenging land hoarding with this Bill. The amendment addresses an aspect that must be changed if the Government has any appetite to challenge land hoarding. A number of large players controls many of the landbanks that are being hoarded.

It is amazing how so few people own so much of it. That has been the way for a long time. Most of the land we were building on in the boom time between 1998 and 2007 was purchased in the late 1980s. It was held and hoarded by a small number of guys before being sold on when the price was good and high. It was easy for them to have a cartel and to pull together in dictating the price of the land. This led directly to our housing crisis. Such crises will continue until measures are introduced at Government level to prohibit the hoarding of land for development or make such hoarding very unattractive. Sadly, this Government has not yet developed an appetite for the necessary measures. It is a terrible pity. Some Government will introduce such measures someday. We will continue to have housing crises until that happens. I do not think the measures that are being proposed to deal with the current housing crisis are sufficient to make a serious dent in the problem. Our housing crisis will continue for a while yet because the measures in question do not have the capacity to make a big difference.

See this speech in context