I want to add my voice to my colleagues in this amendment. The Minister gave his answer in two ways. First, he said that it would encourage compulsory acquisition procedures. That is not necessarily so. In any event, a simple drafting adjustment would get over that. The essence of the transaction is not the compulsory acquisition proceedings but the fact that the acquisition has taken place in consequence of powers vested in the public authority or any other authority who are in a position to acquire, whether the vendor consents or not.
The essence of the word "compulsory" is not that one must go through a procedure and get a judgment, it means that there is a statutory provision here which enables the authority to acquire that asset and a compulsion arises from that. There is no change in that element. If the seller and the local authority agree on the purchase price and the terms of the acquisition, or if they get an arbitrator or judge to decide, the method by which the compulsion is implemented is relatively immaterial. The compulsion itself is the governing factor and the dictating condition, whether compulsory legal procedures are invoked or not. For that reason, I submit that the Minister's objection on these grounds can easily be met by appropriate drafting. I am sure Deputy Colley would not object to his amendment being modified if his intention is carried out.
The second point goes very deeply into this legislation and obviously influences the Minister: It is difficult to discuss this point especially on Committee Stage since it ranges over at least three Bills and we are on Committee Stage discussing one part of a Schedule. Since the Minister mentioned what he called "social factors" perhaps I might be allowed reply.
I certainly agree that any interference in any tax or other statute that is not directly concerned with established legal procedures under another Act, is undesirable. I also agree that from a social point of view to stimulate fractiousness and the invocation of compulsory procedures or legal processes of that nature unnecessarily, are socially to be discouraged. I wholeheartedly take his point on these ideas.
In my view the Minister is in danger of falling into a different social view than the legislative occasion demands. I would have been more convinced of his social point if he had said that Deputy Colley's amendment would tend to keep wealth concentrated rather than distributed. He made that point on other sections of the Bill. When he mentioned "social considerations" I thought that was the point he was coming to. Even though he has not mentioned it I feel I should deal with it. The point made on compulsory acquisition can be got over.
Is the point I have made now in contravention of the social policy? Frankly I do not think so—quite the reverse. What would tend to happen, as is happening these days, is that when there is a compulsory purchase the cases Deputy Colley has mentioned occur often, but there are cases where people are quite glad of compulsory acquisition and are able to concentrate the proceeds in a way that would not fit in with the philosophy I believe the Minister believes in.
The only safeguard against erring from the straight and narrow here is to do the simple, just thing. Therefore, it seems to me that the acquisition of a comparable asset is merely a replacement, in many cases at a loss. I will not repeat Deputy Colley's argument on this but I am in wholehearted support of the cases he has made.
I want to put an additional case, additional in the sense that it is a different type of case. It could happen that it would be hardly desirable socially that an asset be replaced. The Minister brushed that aside and instanced a dwelling house. It is not as simple as that. As Deputy Colley said, the owner may not want to part with an asset, parting might be a loss and a hardship though the loss may not be measurable by the same standards as we have measured gains in other parts of the Bill. I can think of a case where a person has an office or small business on a corner site. He might employ a number of people—it might even be a factory. In other words, the asset involves employment of others. If Deputy Colley's amendment is accepted it will be an encouragement to such a person whose property has been acquired compulsorily to replace it with a comparable asset—in other words, to continue the business on comparable terms. Here I am diverging for social reasons and here I contrast the point with the Minister's case about conglomeration of business and so on.
Deputy Colley is probably right in many or perhaps most cases of compulsory acquisition. There are many people who do not wish to part with an office or business. That is the case Deputy Colley has made on the amendment but there are the other cases to which I referred which are completely different from and in strong contrast to the cases Deputy Colley had in mind, namely cases where people may be just as glad to have the asset acquired or at worst will be willing to make the best of a bad job.
I come again to the case of the corner office or small business. The purchase price goes to the proprietor who has the choice of carrying on but with a change of place, or he may be very glad to get out of business. There are people in such cases who would put their wealth and their profits away in areas which are socially unproductive. Surely the giving of employment in the office or factory I have spoken about would be socially desirable and probably productive.
Perhaps it may be possible for Deputy Colley and the Minister to modify the drafting of the amendment so that there would be a direct incentive in the type of case I have mentioned, so that the person in the conditions I have spoken of would be inclined to reinvest the proceeds of compulsory acquisition in a comparable asset. I should like to know what the Minister thinks of that point. It is not a case of merely looking to see if somebody got a few pounds more profit or something like that. It is a matter of equity and social desirability. The Minister may say: "This does not happen every day of the week." It can happen, particularly in Dublin.