One element of cost is the high price of land in urban centres. This cost arises in the direct schemes operated by various corporations, but the person who is today lucky enough to be able to purchase a house or who attempts to purchase a house is bitterly aware of the fact that a large element in the price he has to pay for that house is the original site price.
The Minister's statements gave us hope that the Government were serious about doing something in this regard. They suggested that the Government, by legislation or otherwise, would attempt to stabilise land prices, would attempt to intervene with a view to ensuring that land prices would not continue their present spiral and that, as a result, the person purchasing his home could anticipate that prices, which are at present rocketing, could at least be held down to a certain level. But so far we have had no action from the Minister in this regard and we are now reaching the stage at which Dublin Corporation are finding it more and more difficult to get the wherewithal to continue a building programme that would break the back of the present housing shortage in Dublin.
A favourite Government statement is to the effect that we will always have a housing shortage and that it is a mark of a prosperous economy to have a housing shortage. We would say that while it may be bearable enough to have a housing shortage, the extent of the housing problem in Dublin at present, and elsewhere in the country, is such that we can no longer tolerate it. As a community, we cannot continue to tolerate a situation in which a man prudently puts aside his week's saving in anticipation of being in a position to buy his own house and then finds that deposits continue to go up and the cost of land continues to advance upwards at an astronomical rate. He finds, too, that the man who invested in land in certain parts of the city three years ago can now look forward to that investment being practically trebled in that three year period.
The question we ask the Government is: is it fair that the needs of the community should be held up to ransom because a group of people, already possessing too much capital, have capital to invest in land which is essential to the expansion of the city, at a time when the city continues to look for favourable land for building, and who are at liberty to say to the city authorities "£X"—naming any figure they please—"is the price we require for the land you need for your building programme"? We ask is it fair to the city authorities and to the community that the Government should stand aside and see this highway robbery being perpetrated, because that is the only way it can be described? In my opinion no moral authority can stand over the making of money on this basis, where the community's needs for housing are held to ransom because somebody is in the possession of land which he bought as a speculative investment. The defence usually advanced for the making of a large profit in an undertaking is that there was a risk involved for the man's capital and, therefore, it is morally right that he should have some return for the risk to his investment, but where is the risk for the man who invests in land near a city? He can go to Havana or to any place in the world and relax for a few years and that investment will accumulate while he is on the broad of his back in any portion of the globe.
We say that it is immoral, in the correct sense of the word, to allow that kind of investment to accumulate, especially when we remember that on the other side of the coin we find vastly increased prices in regard to the person who is attempting to purchase his own house from his savings, because the enhanced profits to the man who invests in the land as a speculation comes from the purchaser, the small individual who wishes to build his own home. Repeatedly we have asked builders to make their house building prices more competitive but they have replied, and justly replied, to many critics by asking "What can we do? The price of land continues to go up and seemingly nobody can halt the rising prices." What makes land near a city centre valuable? What makes land on the perimeter of a city valuable? It is because of its proximity to a large community, to a large centre of population. Was this large urban centre the creation of any one man? No, it was the creation of a whole community involved in business activity. Therefore, we can turn justly to the man who expects to double or treble his money in a few years by getting the title deeds of a section of the land near a city and tell him that, because the efforts of a community, with its many businesses, have gone to make that city an important centre of economic activity, it is wrong that he should expect a continual rise in the price of that land.
Increasingly, also, we find that investors from overseas are becoming involved in this kind of land speculation and the question which the Labour Party are asking themselves is: may we as a community permit this to continue any longer? May we continue to see the price of land constantly increasing, with consequent repercussions on the cost of houses, both in the private and in the public sector? Can we continue to afford the increased prices being asked by private individuals or must we, as other countries in similar situations have done—as in Britain and elsewhere—put a ceiling on the price of land near city centres? We think it is high time that that was done. The Minister's statement had given us hope in this direction but it seems to have been made, like many other ministerial statements, just for newspaper consumption. We have been waiting for action since that speech. It seems to us that we are not serious about the housing problem unless we tackle this problem of land prices. If we do not tackle it, then we are not determined to break the back of the housing problem that exists, because we would need to get money from Heaven if, as a community, we are to continue to pay, without protest, the present prices for land near the city centre.
This is a totally different question from the question of agricultural land throughout the country. What we are dealing with is the question of land near the city which the city requires for its development and whether we should allow the free force of market prices to obtain in regard to this land, and we are pointing out that in a similar situation Britain and other European countries invoked power to hold down land in such areas to a reasonable price. We do not believe that anybody owning such land should be at a loss. We do not suggest that anybody should be expropriated from such land, but we suggest that these people should not hold up the community to ransom. We all know that the price of a three bedroomed house is steadily going up to between £4,000 and £5,000 and we know that there are people who are attempting to buy their own houses who will be paying off mortgages for the rest of their working lives. Are we to permit a situation in which hundreds of families in our cities will, in effect, be paying, for the rest of their lives, a bonus to absentee landlords of the description mentioned in our Bill? It seems to me that the absentee landlord of Land League days deservedly came in for a certain amount of odium and dislike from the people amongst whom he lived. But here is an absentee landlord in our city areas who is definitely a parasite in the complete sense of the word. What we have asked the Government to do is to intervene to ensure that land prices are kept at reasonable levels and that we do not allow the free force of the market to be invoked here, especially in the area surrounding our city.
Looking around Dublin at the moment we can say that there is a great deal of land which, naturally, in the future, in the case of immediate surrounding areas, will be needed for the development of the city. Is it right, therefore, that we should allow persons at this time with this advance knowledge to invest in such land and merely wait a few years before they can ask of us any price they desire? This is the question before the community. It is not a question that can be side-tracked as a Labour Party irrelevance. It is a question that we fairly ask of every Deputy in the House of every political persuasion. It is a question the community itself must answer, a question that none of us can afford to avoid by mere sloganising. Above all, we would not like to see our opinions and suggestions described as merely another example of the Labour Party's dislike of private property. It is not Labour Party policy to take the property of any man in this country but what we do say is that where, as in this case, a private individual engages in a frank land speculation in the full knowledge that this is a speculation and an investment in which his money need only be held for a short term, two or three years or a shorter period in certain circumstances, it is totally wrong that such an individual should be free to invest in such a nefarious speculation.
However, I believe that our many enemies up and down the country at the moment and our many enemies in the public press, our many enemies who see their only purpose at this time to be to misrepresent Labour Party policy, will again try to do so. I have no doubt that tomorrow morning we shall see scare headlines and hear rumours going out as a result of this motion being discussed here tonight. Let that be so. This country has always been held up by such people. They have always attempted to hold up the advance of a democratic Labour Party and put the community and its progress behind their own particular prejudices. I have no doubt that they will do so in this case also. We believe it is worth risking the commentaries and the judgment of these mudslingers. We believe that the matter at issue here is important enough to risk even another few pints of red paint being thrown at us from that direction. We have received enough of it, God knows, in the past month and presumably they will be liberally dishing out more pots of red paint in the months to come.
But we turn the question back to them: have they any answer to this problem of spiralling land prices? Have they any answer for the person who cannot meet the price of a house, for those whom the corporation cannot house at present, for the young married couple who can get no decent accommodation? Will empty slogans of their prejudices fulfil the need in the cases of these people or can they deny that this motion in our name is an honest attempt to grasp a very hot nettle, indeed, but one that I believe any community must grasp if it is serious about the housing problem.
We believe that the Minister should live up to his reported statement because it is on this statement that we produce this motion. He gave evidence of a realisation of the kind to which we refer. The Minister in his speech appeared to realise that there are private buccaneers at liberty at present holding the community up to ransom in the matter of land prices. He appeared to suggest that the community must take action against these buccaneers. But he has taken no action in the intervening period. Whether this has arisen because of the Minister's Party's rather close connection with people who engage in land speculation is not for me to say. We appreciate that the Fianna Fáil Party, being the Party of reality, is in very close touch with these speculators in one form of reality, the reality of the increase in a land investment over a very short period. We want the Minister to overlook these connections of his Party and to tackle the problem courageously because we believe it must be tackled if we are to proceed with the building of houses. I do not see any hope of the small builder being able to offer houses at a reasonable rate if, in looking for sites, this small builder is to be at the mercy of somebody who went into the land venture in the first place to get the highest possible price. What the builder must pay for the site and include in the cost of the house is inevitably passed back to the private consumer, the person looking for the house, the young married couple.
This is one need that nobody in the community can ignore. None of us can do without shelter. May we ask one more question of our critics up and down the country at present—how can we abide a situation in which the community can permit, in the matter of housing, large profits to be made by a small number of people? Can we permit this situation to continue? Should we not see to it that housing is dealt with like any other social service and that we take action to see that it is delivered at a reasonable price to our people? Any country owes it to its citizens, those adults who are working at full productive capacity whether in an office, a factory or a profession, that they should be enabled to get houses at a reasonable price and this should be ordained by the laws of the community. As a community we are not doing all that could be done at present because we are taking no action against these land speculators. The press is full of denunciations of anti-social pickets and strikers. Is nothing to be said, therefore, of these people, equally or, indeed, far more anti-social, who neither sow nor reap but who, by putting so much money into a certain parcel of land, which ultimately must be developed, can gather profits at the expense of the community?
May we, as a community, continue to ignore the empty social activities of such individuals? Could we suggest to our opponents that they should examine the activities of these fellow travellers—that is what they are; fellow travellers in a domain in which they can make very easy money indeed? Can we ignore their activities at present when they are having a very sunny time while we as a community have taken no action against them? We have stood with our arms folded and seen them invest in land. We are all aware of the type of price at present being charged in the Dublin city area for sites and land for development. All of this must ultimately be paid for by the ordinary couple, or young families attempting to build a house, or it must be paid by the corporation. We do not think this situation can be permitted to continue and we invite other Deputies here to speak their minds and to support this particular motion.
