I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
At the best of times the process of reform legislation in this State or in this House tends to be very slow and difficult. Before a measure can be put through the Houses of the Oireachtas, irrespective of what quarter it comes from or from which party it emanates, it requires a high degree of consensus and support and a recognition of its urgency.
In relation to the question of the need to regulate the price of urban building land that consensus, by and large, has now been reached. So far as the Labour Party are concerned there has been recognition for a long time of the paramount importance of the introduction of a Bill of this kind. Indeed, the last Fianna Fáil Government recognised that some degree of response to the problem was required. Consequently, they commissioned the Kenny Report. We have now as a Member of this House a man who was a member of that committee. I refer to Deputy O'Donoghue from whom I hope we shall be hearing during this debate which I understand will continue over a couple of weeks.
Thy Labour Party were requested in line with what was set out in our policy document and confirmed by way of a motion at our annual conference, to introduce such a Bill. With the assistance of numerous Members of the Labour Party and of the people in the Bills Office, I spent the last year or so attempting to devise such a Bill. I have attempted to bring in a Bill which meets the first test of being workable, both in terms of meeting the requirements of the Constitution and of being feasible of operation when it becomes law. The Bill is designed in essence to control the cost of land required for building, whether it be agricultural land coming for the first time into the urban net or existing land being redeveloped for new urban use. The present situation is that such land, particularly agricultural land or land which has been under-utilised can obtain on the open market a price away in excess of its existing or intrinsic use value. The difference between the existing use value and the market value is created solely by demand as a result of growth and expansion of the urban community. This value is in no way created by the individual landowner, land tenant or person with any form of interest in the land. Under our Constitution and our present legal system the added community value created by the growth and expansion of the urban community can be captured by an individual land-owner who by accident of location is in a position to benefit from it. That individual landowner can subsequently resell back to the community land at that increased price and retain the profit.
Notwithstanding the provisions of the capital gains tax and the now defunct provisions of the wealth tax, the position is as I have described it. If you could describe the history of the latter part of the nineteenth century in this country as a struggle from Fintan Lawlor down for the control of rural land, then we are coming to the stage where, in the last years of the twentieth century, our history in social terms could accurately be described as a struggle for control of urban land, and I shall conclude by quoting from Fintan Lawlor.
What is the background to the situation that brought about the publication in March, 1973 of the Kenny Report and the present situation in June, 1980 where we still have no proposal to deal with the problems of urban building land? Why is it necessary to deal with these problems? The facts substantiate that this country and our society are faced with the task and challenge of urban growth, the growth of our population in absolute terms since the establishment of the State in 1921 and the shift of that population from a rural to an urban habitat. The nation quite simply is moving house. There is no more simple way to describe the enormous, constant and never ending shift from rural to urban Ireland. This movement has gone on unabated since the foundation of the state. In 1920 or thereabouts approximately 20 to 25 per cent of our population lived in what would be described as urban areas—that is, towns with a population of more than 1,500—the balance living in rural Ireland. According to the 1971 census—we do not have a breakdown of the latest census—the balance has shifted to 52 per cent in urban areas and 48 per cent in rural areas. It is quite clear from existing trends that, even maintaining the census definition, by the end of this century the position will be all but reversed. Eighty per cent or thereabouts will live in what are described as urban areas and 20 per cent in rural areas. Indeed, if 20 per cent of our population live directly on and off the land, it would still be probably the highest percentage of agricultural population within the European Community as it then will be. That growth is a phenomenon of Irish society which is not going to go away.
Because of the rate and speed of that growth, the whole pattern of settlement evolved over the previous 300 years at least is now being reversed in the space of 80 to 90 years. There was in consensus terms a recognition on all sides of this House of the need to confirm the expansion of urban Ireland and to plan and coordinate a settlement pattern for this island.
In 1963 a former Minister of this House who is still a Deputy, Deputy Blaney, moved what I believe in many respects to be one of the most radical pieces of legislation of this House—the 1963 Planning and Development Act. This Act and the amended Act of 1976, combined to respond to how a society can regulate, in the interests of social justice and equity, the growth to which I have referred. In that legislation a specific role for the local authorities as the planning authorities was set out to enable them to regulate, on behalf of the community and in the interests of the common good, the orderly development of our human settlements. I now submit to the House that it has become effectively impossible for the local authorities as planning authorities to meet that objective which is enacted in our law if there is not available to them, and through them to the community, some mechanism or means to regulate the cost and supply of development land to the market in order to maintain some degree of social justice in our society. If we do not empower local authorities, as planning authorities with the necessary legislative instruments, we shall be building into the bricks and mortars of our settlements the pattern of social injustice which it will be impossible to remove for many, many years. There are enough inequalities in our society without their being cemented into the ground. Yet the present situation is moving in such a way that this is what will result if we do not take action.
I can understand why there is reluctance to take action. We are products—and, indeed, sometimes prisoners—of our culture and background. Most of us, if indeed not all, in first or second generation come from a rural past. In my case my grandfathers left the land, not willingly, but in search of a better form of life. The value system of that heritage has permeated to the present day. It affects our attitudes and our willingness to interfere with the system of land tenure. Indeed, to a certain extent it could be argued that it is embodied in the 1937 Constitution. Such an attitude does not justify the most extraordinary increase in urban land prices that has occurred over the last 30 years.
I should like to give the House some examples and to quote the first example in the Kenny Report of increased land prices:
In 1938 a farm of land containing 128 acres with a substantial residence on it in Clondalkin, County Dublin, was purchased for £3,600 when it had no value as building land. The lands have not yet been provided with services but in 1971 the Corporation of Dublin decided to acquire them for their building programme. They negotiated an agreed purchase price of £192,075 with the owners. This was reasonable having regard to prices which were being paid for similar land near Dublin. There was no element of speculation whatever. This is an increase in price of over 5,000 per cent between 1938 and 1971.
That Report gives a series of examples, one more dramatic than the other, and they, obviously, only went up to 1971 or 1972. The most recent up-dating of that study in terms of land prices is contained in a document produced by an agency of the Department of the Environment, An Foras Forbartha. The author is Mr. R. Jennings, and the document is entitled "Land Transactions and Prices in the Dublin Area. 1974-1978". In essence that confirms the trend outlined in the first example in the Kenny Report. In one of its general conclusions that report states:
The price of private housing land transacted over the period increased five fold from about £500 in 1974 to £3,000 in 1978 per undeveloped house site. The increases were not uniformly spread over the Dublin Area, but ranged from a six fold increase in the South Suburbs to a one-and-a-half fold increase in the New Town Areas.
I do not believe that as a community we can afford to pay such massive transfers of wealth within our society and not at the end of the day produce a more unequal society. I do not believe any party has a mandate here to increase the degree of inequality in our society. Yet, if we do not act and enable the community to retain the added-value which it alone creates, as illustrated in the two examples I quoted, that is precisely what we are doing. In the early seventies, the Government responded to that pressure and established the Kenny Committee. Their report generally recommended that the law should be changed and that the principle of existing use value, plus an added percentage, should be the maximum amount a land owner would get in a designated area if the local authority needed to acquire that land or thought it was required for overall development.
There were divided opinions on that committee and a minority report was produced. However, all opinions were agreed that the question of the constitution might be at issue and confined themselves exclusively to the question of new land coming into the urban net for the first time. They did not address themselves to the even more critical problem of the redevelopment of inner city land or land which had ceased to be used for its original purpose and was in the process of transition. I share the view that the Kenny Report was inadequate and I regret that successive Governments have not brought forward a legislative proposal which in part would meet the positive aspects of the findings in that report and add to them a measure which would enable the local authority to respond to the question of existing development land coming on to the market for the second, third or subsequent time.
Our Bill will enable just that. Basically, the Bill has three parts. It enables a local authority to assess what is required or considered to be the total area of land, both existing and new, which will be required for development and expansion of the urban population in a forthcoming period of five years. It is open to the process of public participation and consultation in so far as it proposes that the local authority's assessment of that designated area should go on public exhibition and the ordinary public, as individuals, would have the right to make submissions to extend or amend in whatever way they thought fit the proposed designated area. Under the Bill a local authority would have to take into account such submissions after the process of public exhibition had been undertaken. Ultimately, it would be the reserve function of the councillors of that local authority to define the designated area. That designated area then would go to the Minister for the Environment who could confirm in whole or in part, or refuse to confirm, the proposal of the local authority. In other words, an open democratic consultative procedure which could not be described as authoritarian, confiscatory or bureaucratic, a procedure modelled on the process of development planning as set out in the 1963 Act and used, in part, because of the familiarity of the Department, the local authorities and, at this stage, the public with that process. It is a procedure which the Government and the Minister used in relation to the Act dealing with toll roads.
The second section of the Bill provides that having designated the area required the local authority alone will be the body entitled to purchase land in that area. Obviously, it would not need all the land for its own use and it would consequently be empowered to purchase land and sell it on to interested bodies concerned and involved in the development process of our urban areas for the provision of everything ranging from churches and places of religious worship to industrial employment, the entire spectrum of urban activity which requires land. It would be the local authority alone that would be empowered to purchase the land. The final section establishes the process whereby, in the absence of an agreement, a lands tribunal would be established and the process of arbitration and compensation clearly set out.
On the question of land purchase by a local authority there is now a second argument riding parallel to the initial one of equity which makes it imperative that a local authority have this power. It is my view as a working politician, a former member of a local authority and as a professional architect and planner that the present Act dealing with planning and development casts local authorities in the role of a referee in the football match analogy of the development process. As such it can regulate and comment on, and, periodically, blow the whistle on the process of urban development but it cannot effectively direct or control it. I believe the second provision in the Bill, that of the unique purchase, will enable the local authority to move from the passive position of being a referee, frequently powerless in the face of the development process, to be the prime mover, co-ordinator and body that can regulate the rate and scale of urban growth. It is that power and facility which will enable the local authority to ensure that the growth occurs in certain areas in a co-ordinated and comprehensive fashion and most important of all—the Minister will accept this—in accordance with the available capital funds for such a development.
The scale of urban growth is placing such an extraordinary demand on our requirements for services of an infrastructural nature, for facilities both social and educational and additional ones such as recreation and religious that, as an urban community, we cannot afford them if they are not approached in a co-ordinated and integrated fashion. The absence of such powers to local authorities ensures that urban development around our towns and cities is occurring in an unco-ordinated and scattered fashion which is imposing an enormous drain on the resources from the Custom House to each local authority. As regards the capital and current account budgets for each local authority, it is no fault of the Minister involved as it is reasonable to argue that every Minister for the Environment will be faced with the same problem when the irrationalities of the capitalist system continue to swing from boom to slump. That problem, even in a planned economy, will not go away. We are going through an historical process of change which will settle out in about 20 years. We have only that length of time to respond to it.
At present, because of the unco-ordinated way it is occurring we are getting a haphazard unco-ordinated growth in our urban environment which results in some people, whose cheque books are large enough, can buy a home in a place with adequate facilities while other people, not in that position, cannot. They have to try to create a home in an area where the supports do not exist and will not for about five or ten years. The most graphic memory I have of that description was a constituent of mine in search of a house in Ringsend coming to me and my telling her that at that time there was no possibility of her getting a house locally but given her position on the points system she could reasonably expect a house in the outer suburbs. It would have been no more than six or seven miles from where we were both sitting and her response was that it was so far out from the urban areas that she knew and derived support from that she would need a passport to live that far away. That is not a prejudice against rural suburban Ireland. It was a straightforward recognition that an area where there were no schools or post office, where she could not have a telephone for five years and where the bus services did not extend would provide no possibility for her, her husband or children to create a home out of a house if her husband was to maintain his job as a shift worker in the Irish Glass Bottle Company. That is the reality for many people. We are a long way from the two- and three-car family. Given the current price of energy I do not see us achieving it. The creation of urban estates without the necessary facilities is posing major problems for people.
The problem is current in the newspapers and recognised frequently. There have been numerous articles and requests for action. The most recent was carried in yesterday's Irish Times under the by-line of Frank Kilfeather who has watched and commented on the process of urban growth in the Dublin area for many years. He is the longest serving local government correspondent of any newspaper. In his article under the title “Gentlemen Farmers” he states:
The situation at present is that most local authorities throughout the country cannot afford to buy land banks; they cannot compete with the speculators because land prices have got so much out of hand. Dublin Corporation is finding it almost impossible to build in the city and most of their houses are now being constructed in the county area. Land in the county is also expensive but Dublin County Council refused to change the Development Plan density of ten dwellings to the acre to the 15 or 20 to the acre that the City Council would like. There are between 5,000 and 6,000 families on the housing list in Dublin; 500 families are squatting in Corporation dwellings.
We know from the census figures that the pressure is not going to go away and that the cost of accumulating a land bank is becoming so expensive that local authorities simply are not proceeding to do so. If the argument is so clear what are the reservations and what is preventing them from doing what we all know must be done? The two previous Governments accepted in principle the response of the Kenny Report. It is embodied in Article 43 of the Constitution. I should like to put on record the section of that Article which enables a measure like this to meet the constitutional test. I accept it is a valid criticism for anyone in the House to say that while they agree with the principles set out in the Bill it would appear to be in conflict with the provisions in the Constitution. Article 43 (2) 1 states:
The State recognises, however, that the exercise of the rights mentioned in the foregoing provisions of this Article, ought, in civil society, to be regulated by the principles of social justice.
2º The State, accordingly may as occasion requires delimit by law the exercise of the said rights with a view to reconciling their exercise with the exigencies of the common good.
The phrase "the exigencies of the common good" is embodied in the long title of our Bill, not by any coincidence but to meet that provision. I do not believe the Constitution of 1937 was ever designed either by Dr. McQuaid or by the late Eamon de Valera to enable fortuitous and accidental landowners on the periphery of urban areas to capture for themselves the community created value of urban growth. I do not believe, in fairness to both gentlemen, that they were capable of foreseeing the urban growth that has taken place. In relation to Eamon de Valera he was opposed to it. He belonged to a time and era which would have preferred us to maintain our rural past rather than our urban present and future. One cannot prevent the process of social change, much as one would like to. It is critical and important that we recognise what that process is, why it is, what is determining it and how we respond to it so that we constantly relate to it and attempt to ensure that the basic principle of social justice is made more feasible rather than more difficult and less feasible.
For reasons I do not understand—and on which the Minister might elaborate with the assistance of the expertise in his Department—both in the minority report of the Kenny Report and frequently by way of replies to parliamentary questions from former Deputy Kevin Boland and others, there has been some constitutional fear about taking land into controlled price ownership, that somehow or other it would be repugnant to the Constitution. It seems to me that the balance has always come down on the side of the individual against the exigencies of the common good. Yet there is no proposal in either the Kenny Report, with its existing use value plus 25 per cent, or in the Labour Party Bill before the House to take away or confiscate property, no proposal whatsoever. There is a proposal to compensate people whose property is compulsorily acquired. There is the proposal, as set out in section 15 of the Act and in the accompanying Schedule to our Bill, to compensate people who wish to continue the activity of farming to the extent that the cost of re-location, in addtion to the acquisition of a new farm, can be provided for.
I do not see in any clause of the Constitution that the inalienable right to private property confers on the citizens of this State the inalienable right to the maximum market price they can screw out of the community. I have read the Constitution and all the arguments surrounding this and I have yet to come across that particular clause. I really do not believe it is there because if it were then the present Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism would be in contempt of the Constitution because he exercises a system of price control. There are certain commodities sold by traders throughout this country whose price is regulated, who could get more for their commodity if the full, open market was allowed to prevail, but they are not so allowed. There are price control provisions enacted in this House which have never been tested or found to be repugnant to the Constitution. It appears that we can control the maximum price for stout, butter and meat, but when it comes to the sacred question of land then we are talking about something different and the provisions of the Constitution mysteriously come into operation.
That brings me back to the kernel of this matter, which is our attitude to land in the 1980s, our attitude to land in the twentieth century. Each one of us in this House has in our memory cells the history of the land struggle of the last 200 to 300 years. We are in essence the children, if not the grand-children, of a peasant people. The very basis of our survival was related to our ability to hold and own productive land. The struggle of Irish history and of the Irish people could be told simply through the history of the land struggle. We should not allow ourselves to become prisoners of our past. We should not allow ourselves to become trapped by patterns, values and attitudes, valid in their own time but which no longer have relevance to today's needs. The land struggle of the 1880s was one of a people for survival, to own land, to grow food with which to feed themselves.
I believe that in a period of rapid urban growth—and we have now the fastest urban growth of any member state of the EEC—the last 20 years of this decade will be a struggle for urban land. If we do not regulate its price, if we do not as a community keep to ourselves the added value we create instead of allowing it to be highjacked or taken away, then at the end of the twentieth century we will have built into the bricks and mortar of our society a human settlement pattern which will be fundamentally unjust in that it will render it more difficult for people with limited means to exercise urban choice or avail themselves of urban facilities because of the way in which land is allocated.
The Jennings Report talked about land prices increasing six times in some areas, the south city area, and one-and-a-half times in the new towns of the western area of the city. There is a reason for that; there are more facilities, resources and opportunities on the south city side than there are on the western side and that is reflected in those land values. I believe all parties share the view—but the Labour Party particularly are fundamentally committed to it—that if we want to create a socially just society we must begin to construct a stage upon which social justice is at least a possibility.
I should like to conclude with a quotation from James Fintan Lalor, who is described as patriot and political essayist in a book on his writings published by The Talbot Press Limited in 1919 with a preface by Arthur Griffith. Lalor, addressing himself to the nineteenth century land struggle and to the land owners of that day after the Great Famine, said—and this applies line by line to today:
The rights of property may be pleaded. No one has more respect for the real rights of property than I have; but I do not class among them the robber's right by which the lands of this country are now held in fee for the British crown. I acknowledge no right of property in a small class which goes to abrogate the rights of a numerous people. I acknowledge no right of property in eight thousand persons, be they noble or ignoble, which takes away all rights of property, security, independence, and existence itself, from a population of eight millions, and stands in bar to all the political rights of the island, and all the social rights of its inhabitants. I acknowledge no right of property which takes away the food of millions, and gives them a famine—which denies to the peasant the right of a home, and concedes, in exchange, the right of a workhouse. I deny and challenge all such rights, howsoever founded or enforced. I challenge them, as founded only on the code of the brigand, and enforced only by the sanction of the hangman. Against them I assert the true and indefeasible right of property—the right of our people to live in this land and possess it—to live in it in security, comfort and independence, and to live in it by their own labour, on their own land, as God and nature intended them to do.
Lalor, an Irish patriot and poet, talking from his own direct experience of the nineteenth century, was forecasting something to which we must now respond.
