Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Does the Minister agree with Mr. Justice John Kenny's 1973 report which said that the profits accruing from a public decision to rezone land rightly belong to the public rather than the developer? The report found that the lack of such a tax on the profits that accrue from a rezoning decision leads to a tendency to hoard land. Rather than being a disincentive for owners to dispose of land, it is actually an incentive for people to speculate on, store and hoard land. Have we learned nothing from that Kenny report? The legislative provision to which I refer was introduced as a practical way to introduce Mr. Justice Kenny's recommendations. There would have been constitutional difficulties in the context of interfering with property rights but a tax on super-normal profits was a very real and practical way of getting away from the incentive to speculate on or hoard land, which is contributing to increases in the cost of accommodation. Does the Minister disagree with the Kenny report? Does he not think that land hoarding and the whole game regarding land speculation were two of the main causes of the property crisis? Why would the Minister not try to tackle that problem at source?

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