Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Maybe he will come in afterwards. I thank Deputy McGrath for stepping into the breach when I thought I would be late. I certainly did not want this discussion to be collapsed because, I have to say, it is one of the worst pieces of legislation I have ever come across. While I have not tabled an amendment on this Stage I certainly will do so, although the Bill is probably not amendable and I think I will end up voting against it in its entirety.

It is appropriate to start by looking at what got us here and looking with a bit of depth, and maybe with a bit of a different slant from some of the other Deputies who spoke earlier, with regard to the backdrop to this. On 14 November 2012, IDA Ireland served Thomas Reid with a compulsory purchase order, CPO, for his home and lands at Blakestown in County Kildare. It wanted the lands for Intel, which wished to expand its operations in Ireland and it wanted to do it on the land owned by Thomas Reid. Three years and one very lonely battle against the State later, on 5 November 2015 Thomas Reid won a stunning Supreme Court victory against IDA Ireland. Let us remember it was a unanimous verdict. The five judge court ruled that IDA Ireland had acted ultra vires in terms of the Industrial Development Act 1986 and was objectively biased in its quest to CPO Thomas Reid's home. On the day when he came out of the court, he was asked whether he was happy and he made a very profound statement when he said he was sure they were rearranging themselves behind closed doors, and so they were. The fruits of that rearrangement lie in the Bill before us today.

What the Bill does is simply an end run around the Supreme Court judgment in the Thomas Reid case to ensure never again can IDA Ireland be stopped through a legal challenge from acquiring people's lands for use by US multinationals. We have to be clear about what Bill is about and what it is not about. On my way in, I listened to speakers from the Government, Fianna Fáil and, even in some ways, Sinn Féin stating this is in the public interest and about job creation and that we have to see it in this way. This is not what it is about. It is about facilitating and smoothing the expropriation of lands and homes to gift them to US corporations that could well afford to buy land from people who are prepared to surrender that land voluntarily. Let us be clear about it. This is not about CPOs for schools, hospitals or roads. It only deals with CPOs for foreign industry. In fact, Enterprise Ireland has been specifically excluded from the Bill. Lest anybody be in any doubt that this is about helping IDA Ireland acquire premises for small and medium-sized businesses, it is not. It is purely for foreign direct investment.

Looking back at Thomas Reid's case can give us some idea of what is down the tracks, if the Bill is passed, the next time a US multinational, with a bit of help from this Bill, decides to build. In 2011, when land prices were at an historic low and emigration figures were at a depressing high, Intel approached Thomas Reid looking to buy some land from him. Thomas refused, as was his right. Intel was not interested in taking "no" for an answer and, with the assistance of IDA Ireland which was right there to help it, within six months of his refusal to sell, IDA Ireland started the process of acquiring his lands against his will. It was not for a school, hospital or motorway.

Intel did not have to build its new plant on the land owned by Thomas Reid. It wanted to do so because his land was beside Intel's Leixlip campus and it suited it to expand sideways because it was the cheapest and easiest option. For a multi-billion euro multinational doing things cheap and easy is how to get ahead. What I find utterly shocking is the role played by the IDA in the Reid case. It effectively was the muscle for a multi-billion euro multinational in its fight against an Irish landowner, which is unacceptable. For me, this raises serious questions about the role of the IDA, in that its role as a State body with the remit of securing foreign direct investment meshes into it being a chief lobbying arm of multinationals in Ireland.

What happened in the court is the backdrop to this situation. The IDA was exposed as giving falsehoods because it was on the court record as denying that it attempted to use its extraordinary powers for the benefit of a specific identifiable corporation. It was only when it was before the Supreme Court that it realised it was running out of options and it admitted that Intel was one of the potential parties interested in the land. This failed endeavour cost the State in the region of €2 million in legal fees. It did not cost Intel anything. It must also be said that the chairman of the IDA at the time of the compulsory purchase order, CPO, was also a non-executive director of the PM Group, a consultancy firm that chose Thomas Reid's site as the most attractive for Intel from a survey conducted in west Dublin. The Supreme Court found that this individual had participated in two key decisions relating to the lands at Blakestown: the original decision to initiate the CPO and the crucial final decision in making the CPO in November 2012. Mr. Justice McKechnie found that a reasonable observer might doubt whether the chairman would be in a position to remain as objective as he might have been expected to be in the circumstances. I think Mr. Justice McKechnie was pretty judicious in his comments. A less kind commentator might say that it was a massive and insurmountable conflict of interest.

When one looks at the literature on CPOs globally, they are always referred to as a last resort. There is no mention of the State expropriating private land for the benefit of private multinational corporations. They are normally talked about as being required for infrastructure projects, which is fair enough, and, occasionally, for public private partnerships, which is unsurprising in the neoliberal world order in which we live. While I might not agree with this, I can see a certain logic in it but forcibly expropriating land for the benefit of a private multinational is rare. No other country in the world, with the exception of Israel, does this. In that case, it is more a compulsory bulldozing than a compulsory purchase of land owned by citizens in a sovereign State. Interestingly, up to 2010, Intel's only other plant outside of the United States, other than the one in Ireland, was, coincidentally, in Israel.

A review of compulsory purchase law by a World Bank senior counsel states that an over-arching principle in most cases is that a Government's taking powers are extraordinary powers that are intended to meet public needs that are not well addressed through the operation of the market and, hence, it is not typical for laws to allow Governments to use compulsory acquisition as the normal means of assembling land for purposes that are clearly for commercial, industrial or other profitable private uses alone. The World Bank is not exactly an entirely radical organisation. This premise operates the world over, except now it seems in Ireland. On my way here I listened on my phone to Fianna Fáil Deputies' speaking about the data centres, Apple, Google and Amazon. I do know how I managed not to crash. Data centres are not public goods. Their only strategic function is the bottom line of the multinationals which own them. In terms of climate change and our energy commitments, and with very few jobs delivered, these will cost us millions of euros in carbon fines in the next few years. What we are looking at is tin pot stuff in terms of this legislation. I find this shocking. We give over our airports to the US for use and we give over our taxation to Apple. We tell multinationals not to worry, they will not have to pay tax here. We are all aware of NAMA and the great vulture fund sell-off and what is happening now with the data centres. If this was not enough, we are now flogging thousands of properties to vulture funds at knock-down prices and we now propose to take land from under the feet of landowners who do not want to sell. I am gobsmacked that this legislation is being put forward. If it is passed, this will be a free-for-all and I am very concerned about that.

It is ironic that we had to listen at the weekend to the protestations of the new Attorney General, who presumably was the individual who proofed and legally advised the Government on this CPO process. It is not accidental, I think, that down the Wicklow way we have had a long running saga regarding lands at Charlesland and the highly questionable deals done by council officials there in terms of the abuse and use of CPO powers to benefit private developers. The case in Wicklow raises very serious questions about the exercise of CPO powers by State agencies and the transparency of the whole process. I commend the dogged and tireless work of councillors like Barry Nevin and Thomas Cullen, without whose work many of the very serious and troubling questions around this process would not be in the public domain. These men were democratically elected to serve the community of Wicklow and they were stopped at every turn from getting information to allow them to fulfil their statutory duties when a deal was done by the former Wicklow county manager with development companies in order to use the CPO process to acquire land for their private gain, land which had been in the ownership of the local authority for housing purposes. I mention the Attorney General because in his former life he was the senior counsel called in to review the process of the proposal by Wicklow County Council to CPO these controversial lands. It is regrettable that in the course of the successful defamation case taken by those heroic Wicklow councillors evidence was produced which showed evidence of shortcomings in the review conducted by the Attorney General, which is worrying given this is the individual who is legally advising on this CPO process. He had in his possession information which showed that the manager's order, put forward by the Wicklow county manager, stating the reason the council had to CPO these lands was because they were needed the land for social housing as the council had an acre or half an acre of land for social housing purposes. In the review which the Attorney General saw at the time the evidence showed that the county manager knew that Wicklow County Council had more than 20 acres for land for social housing purposes such that the basis on which they CPO was sought was a demonstrable lie because the manager's order was false and flawed.

That was in the possession of the Attorney General but he never made that point or brought it up. It is shockingly worrying that this individual, who obviously did not understand and played a less than welcome role in that CPO process, is advising the Government on this. It is clearly not just judicial appointments about which this gentleman is not keeping up to speed. He is very much behind the ball in terms of his knowledge of what is going on in this House and the legislation before it. For me, it is not the first time his judgment has been seriously called into question. We will be hearing a lot more from him if he keeps it up.

The provision in the Bill which deals with an appeal to An Bord Pleanála is highly unsatisfactory as the board invariably approves the CPO orders. It does not investigate adequately. It generally simply accepts the assurances of the organisation seeking the CPO. Any statistical analysis of appeals and cases that have gone before the board would verify that. However, even if that was not an issue, An Bord Pleanála's remit is not to investigate shady dealings, potential bias or whatever one wishes to call it. The key issue in the Wicklow case, and a potentially huge issue with regard to the IDA's CPO powers, is an area that the board is not called in to question.

The Minister implied that the IDA lost the Reid case more or less on a technicality and that the principle of the IDA being empowered to take lands to gift to multinationals is one that is enshrined in Irish law since the 1980s. That may or may not be the case, but what certainly is the case is the fact that the principle underlying this Bill is repugnant as far as I am concerned. The principle of expropriating land and property to line the pockets of private business is repugnant to most citizens in this State. It is clear from the Wicklow case that there is insufficient scrutiny or oversight of the process. When elected county councillors are denied information and information is deliberately withheld from them, one can say there is considerable scope for questionable dealings. When a semi-State agency is to be given these unfettered powers, we should all be worried based on what has happened already.

We will probably deal with it later on Committee and other Stages, but there is much to be answered for already with regard to the CPO processes in this State. The manager's order in Wicklow, for example, was shown to be false and misleading according to the court. It is a very serious matter. It is interesting to note that the Tánaiste, in his previous role as Minister in that Department, agreed to have an investigation into the process there. That must be done because the review that was carried out fell well short of what was necessary. In 2015, one of the individuals who acted as a whistleblower in that case submitted 44 questions to the then Minister with responsibility for local government, Deputy Alan Kelly, about the goings on between senior members of Wicklow County Council and the Dunne and Mulryan group about the Charlesland land. It is interesting that the former Minister, who now has a profound interest in whistleblowers and matters of justice, had a less than enthusiastic approach in his ministerial position when whistleblowing councillors, some of whom were in his own party at the time, came forward with serious evidence of wrongdoing. That wrongdoing was subsequently exposed, to an extent, in the successful defamation case they had to take to defend their good names.

I salute the efforts of the Wicklow councillors. I compliment Thomas Reid. In many ways he has been inspirational, a lone wolf taking on a giant single-handedly and winning, with five Supreme Court judges agreeing with him. However, that was not good enough. A multinational had to be given the land from under him and the law had to be changed to facilitate it. One can talk about selling and prostituting ourselves and giving it away, but today is a new low in that regard. The legislation is incredibly regrettable.

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