The Chair would like to know if there is agreement to finish this business tonight.
Private Members' Business. - Local Government (Building Land) Bill, 1980: Second Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
I understand there is agreement to that effect.
In that case I will be calling on the proposer of the Bill to reply at 8.15. Deputy Horgan has 30 minutes.
We have had two weeks now in debating this Private Members' Bill in the name of Deputy Quinn and which is supported by all the other Members of this party. The two weeks' debate has shown the value of bringing in this Bill, not least in view of the wide range of opinions that have been expressed on the matter in question. I think, for example, that there has been a distinct difference in tone between the debate last week and the debate this week. Last week those speakers who were responding to our Bill spoke, by and large, in the terms of people who were speaking from carefully prepared positions, whereas this week we have had more flexibility and both from the Fine Gael and Government benches we have had a greater realisation of the fact that the problem of land prices is a serious problem and one in respect of which some action should be taken.
I was interested particularly in the speeches that were made last night by the Minister of State, Deputy Moore, and by Deputy Fergus O'Brien. The greater part of what Deputy O'Brien had to say might have been said by any speaker in these benches that are occupied by the Labour Party. The Minister of State's concern was in relation to the degree to which young people in particular are prohibited from buying houses and the reason implied was because of the land price element in the cost of housing — though, understandably, he criticised the Bill in terms of the type of solution proposed to deal with the problem. I believe the Minister of State's concern in this area to be genuine. However, I must ask the House to have regard to the record and the record will show that for very many years in relation to any attempt made to provide housing in the area which the Minister of State has represented in Dublin Corporation, and indeed in this House, very few local authority houses were built and there were not applied any compulsory purchase orders for the purpose of buying land on which to build local authority houses. At the very least we must point to this as an indication that for all those years the Minister's concern was ineffective.
I was astounded by Deputy Fox's claim that the introduction of certificates of reasonable valuation have helped in some way to control the price of building land. The introduction of CRVs was a welcome development in the housing area generally, but this move had no effect in regard to controlling the cost of building land. All it does is to ensure that the builder cannot add his mark up beyond a certain reasonable degree to the price he has paid for the land on which he builds houses. In so far as I am familiar with the situation I tend to believe that the profits, and in particular the speculative profits, on building land are not made often by builders but that they are much more likely to be made by developers and that they are made only by builders in situations in which they are also the developers of the land.
Deputy Fox chided the Labour Party for doing in opposition what he claimed they would not do in Government. It would not be any harm that a dose of political honesty be administered here now and again. In this context Deputy Fox will be aware, as everybody else is aware, that in the last Government Labour held 33? per cent of the Cabinet seats. To believe and to act as if 33? per cent of the seats in the Cabinet entitled you to 51 per cent of the power in the making of decisions in the Government is to assume on the part of your audience a degree of naivete that is really quite remarkable. I do not think that anybody inside or outside this House would seriously have accepted the point that Deputy Fox was making in that regard.
When we are talking about this whole area I am reminded of the, no doubt, apocryphal conversation between two American film stars who were discussing with each other what they proposed to do with the many thousands of dollars they got from their respective studios. One said to the other "I am putting my money into land. They are not making any more of it". Now, if that was true in the United States, a country — a continent, almost — where huge tracts of land are still undeveloped and unreclaimed, how much more true is it of a country like Ireland, where the very finite quality of the amount of land which we have is delimited by the seas around our shores. It is fundamental to the thinking behind our Bill that there is a finite supply of land in general, and of development land in particular, in Ireland, and that people do not make land, nor except in certain circumstances do they add to the value of land. They buy it in one fashion or another, they inherit it, but they do not make it. To give people the right to make speculative profits on a commodity which they have not made, do not make, and could not make if they tried, is to fly in the face of every concept of social justice.
I am delighted to be able to tell the House that the interest in this Bill has been phenomenal. In so far as the Labour Party are concerned, no single measure which we have advanced in this House or outside it, has attracted as much public interest and public support as this particular legislation. What I want to do in the time available to me is to talk about the reasons for the Bill, to talk about the options open in relation to the control of the supply of land for building and to deal with some of the arguments which have been made against the Bill by speakers in the House generally. I must say that I am astonished by some of the reactions of some speakers whose basic line has been to imply that this has never been done before, therefore we should not do it here. This is the ultimate argument of conservatism, that because something has not been done before or because the mechanism which is proposed for doing something is not absolutely perfect, then we should do nothing at all. If we were to wait until everybody else had shown us the road to follow and until we had evolved a perfect mechanism for doing what we wanted to do, we would be waiting for ever, and in relation to the control of the price of building land we would be waiting forever and a day.
The main reason that we put forward this Bill is of course, because of the land price element in the cost of new houses and the degree to which this makes housing less and less accessible to the vast mass of our people. According to the replies to a couple of parliamentary questions which I have put down and which I have recently analysed, the cost of housing in general has been rising spectacularly over the past few years. There is one very realistic way in which we can measure the cost of housing and that is to ask how long does somebody have to work to pay for the cost of an average mortgage. In 1977 a person on average wages, buying a house of average price, with, say, two children and a wife who did not work outside the home, had to work for approximately 15½ hours every week to meet the cost of his building society mortgage. In 1980, if that man were to go onto the housing market, again with his average wage, buy a house of average price with a loan from a building society, he would have to work for over 22 hours to meet the weekly cost of his mortgage repayment. In 1980, to put it another way, at a time when one would hope that we had achieved a 40 hour working week, we have a situation in which the average worker has to devote more than half of his wage-earning capacity simply to put a roof over his head. It cannot be denied that the increase in the cost of building land has been a major contributory factor to the increase in the cost of housing and the real increase in the cost of housing for young people, and young workers in particular, over the last few years. That is one of the main reasons why we are advancing this measure.
Another reason why we are advancing this proposal is because the increase that comes in the value of land is almost always an increase which is created, either directly or indirectly, by the community. It is created indirectly in situations in which the physical growth of the community brings into the development zone lands which were previously used only for agricultural purposes. It happens directly when the local authority, using public money, lays on services to make it possible for certain lands to be developed, particularly for housing.
Another reason why we are advancing this Bill is because it would give local authorities powers that they do not have in sufficient degree at the moment to plan not just for housing but for all other ancillary developments like school recreational facilities and other aspects of development which are supposed to be built and provided alongside the new houses as they are being built but only too often are not provided until years afterwards, if, indeed, in some cases, they are provided at all.
Yet another reason is that we believe that the principle of interference or intervention by the State in the capital gains area has long been accepted by successive Governments in this country. That principle has been watered down by the present administration almost to the point of non-existence but it is still there. We believe it should be applied, above all, to dealings in land.
There is one particular problem to which I should like to draw the attention of the House, that is, that recent court decision affecting development land has set every local authority in Ireland by the ears because they have implied that if land in any area could be serviced — whether or not it has actually been serviced — a developer may apply for compensation out of the public purse to any local authority who refuse him planning permission to build on it. If the logic of that decision is followed through not only would developers and would be developers be permitted to make enormous fortunes but even the zoning regulations and laws, which are amongst the few real controls local authorities still exercise, would have been rendered almost meaningless.
In relation to the options which can be discussed in terms of controlling the price of building land there are two main ones about which I should like to talk. The first one is the one in the Bill. I do not propose to go into that in too much detail because it has been very amply explained by Deputy Quinn and indeed commented on rather acrimoniously from the Government side of the House in particular. Basically it is a mechanism which allows a local authority to zone land and to acquire it at a certain price related to the pre-existing use of that land plus a figure for compensation.
There is an alternative mechanism I should like to bring to the attention of the House and which in my view is also a reasonable one. It is that adopted by the Government of the State of South Australia in the early seventies. At that time South Australia created a commission who were empowered to control the price of urban land. The control mechanism they put into that legislation — which is No. 64 of 1973 of the South Australian Parliament—was that the consent of the Land Commission was needed before any land could be sold by one person to another. The Land Commission could refuse that consent if the basis of that sale was such as to create a speculative gain. The key provision of the Act indicated that the commission's permission for the sale would not have to be sought as long as the consideration being paid for the land amounted to no more than the original purchase price plus costs and fees and a sum equivalent to the interest rate which the seller would have had to pay over the period of his ownership on the original purchase price plus fees and other expenses. In other words the commission said, "If you sell your land for what you bought it plus your legal fees and overdraft interest charges we will not interfere but, if you are going to try to make a speculative gain out of it, it will need our consent and we can stop the sale". As a result of that Act the land authority in South Australia are very active in the whole urban development land market. They buy land on the open market and sell land also on the open market to the State agencies which provide houses and to private builders as well. They are enabled so to do because the legislation has the effect of controlling the price of building land. The legislation lays it down effectively that anybody can sell his land for whatever he likes but anybody who buys it from him does so under notice that he may not sell it to anybody else for more than what he paid for it plus a reasonable figure for inflation and interest charges. That is a sort of rolling provision for compensation which ensures that people who buy and sell land are allowed protect themselves against inflation but not to make speculative gains. That is another mechanism that might be considered in relation to the Bill we are now discussing.
I should like to turn now to the arguments which have been made against this Bill. It was said by one speaker that this Bill would make farmers into public benefactors. We have not so many public benefactors that we can afford to rely on their generosity for housing land. What is involved here is not a question of benefaction. It is a question of justice. If it is just and important that a fair supply of building and development land should be available to local authorities, and indeed to private builders as well through the local authorities, at a reasonable price, then what we are talking about is not charity but justice.
It was argued that the mechanism we have written into this Bill is unconstitutional and that the Bill, as a whole, is unconstitutional. With all due respect, allegations of unconstitutionality are not worth breath because the ultimate decision on the constitutionality or otherwise of a Bill is not made in this House. It is made in the courts of the land. Any Government in this State have, within the terms of the Constitution, and within the terms of the Constitution's praise for the concept of the common good, the right to draft and enact this kind of legislation because the definition of the common good, in the first instance, is a political one to be made by the Government in power. Only in the second instance and only if challenged is it a matter for definition by the courts. We believe that the duty of the Government — and this is why we introduced this Bill — is to exercise political will in controlling the price of building land and let it go to the courts if any aggrieved party wants to take it to the courts thereafter. This Government, and any Government, would be failing in their responsibility if they did not at least make the case for a definition of common good that includes adequate control of the price of building land.
Deputy Andrews was very critical of the Bill in several regards and spoke at considerable length about free enterprise, the process of the market place and so on. We must contrast what he said with the facts of the matter. And the facts of the matter are that, for a considerable length of time when Deputy Andrews was a member of Dublin County Council, few, if any, houses were built by that local authority in the local authority area which he and I represent in this House.
On a recent occasion Deputy Andrews acted at the opening of an estate of new houses costing about £43,000 or £44,000 each. There is a limit to the degree to which we can accept statements of concern about the cost of housing and the provision of housing from people with track records like that.
Is the Deputy suggesting that people should not be entitled to purchase houses at prices like that?
I am not suggesting anything of the sort. I am making the basic point that concern for the controlling the cost of housing is best shown in ways other than the way in which Deputy Andrews publicly identified himself.
I am concerned with all sections of the community.
I do not want to get into an argument with Deputy Andrews. There are few sections of the community who could afford to buy houses in the estate Deputy Andrews opened. I would not be happy to open an estate of that kind. Deputy Andrews spoke about confiscation, about dispossession, about minimum compensation and the lack of adequate compensation. Here again we must face the fact that the question of compensation is fundamentally a political consideration, and the degree to which compensation is regarded as adequate or inadequate, fair or unfair, depends on the political judgment of the person who makes such statements. We make our statements on the adequacy of compensation from our political standpoint and Deputy Andrews does it from his. That is his right and we will maintain our position as against his.
Deputy Andrews spoke about the shift in the price element in house costs to the purchaser that would take place as a result of this Bill being enacted. I implore Deputy Andrews to consider what happened to the £1,000 grant introduced by the Government and to consider whether that grant did not find itself miraculously added to the price of all houses eligible, within months of it being introduced.
Deputy Andrews described the Bill as an attack on the fundamental process of the market place, as if nobody had ever attacked the market place before. The prices Commission attack the fundamental process of the market place, and if we are entitled to interfere in the free market or what is called the fundamental process of the market place in respect of so many of the essentials of life, such as the food we eat and the fuel we use to heat our houses with, why should not we interfere with the same alleged free process of the market place in the supply of one of the most precious commodities we have, the supply of building land?
The Deputy will accept——
The Deputy will accept that I did not interrupt him, and I have only four minutes left. All the people can say when they see the unwillingness of Fianna Fáil to interfere in this area of the market place is that there is an obvious link between that and the traditional association of Fianna Fáil with certain powerful sectors in the building industry.
Deputy Andrews spoke about alien ideologies being imposed on us. Of course, there will not be alien ideologies imposed in this House, which will take its own decision freely, but I never thought I would live to see the day when the philosophy of Tone, of Fintan Lalor who was quoted by Deputy Quinn, would be described in this House by a Member of Fianna Fáil as an alien ideology. Would Deputy Andrews extend that to the philosophy of Tone, Davitt, Connolly and the many other people who never were able to sit in this House but who would have been proud of the things being done in the name of the Labour Party here today?
Is it alien to want to own your own house? Is it alien to want to pay a fair price for it, and no more? Is it alien to want to control the price of land in order to ensure the first two objectives? Is it alien to introduce a Bill which would create the mechanism for doing these things? If that is alien I am a Chinaman. I congratulate Deputy Quinn for the work he has done on this Bill. I commend it to the House and I believe that whatever its fate it will be seen as a landmark in Irish Social History.
First of all let me assure Deputy Quinn that far from being opposed to the main objective of the Bill I am in sympathy with it in so far as it aims to tackle the problem of the high cost of building land, particularly land for housing. If the Bill also aims at preventing speculators and individual land owners creaming off the value added to land resulting from investment in services such as water, sewerage and roads by local authorities I am indeed in sympathy with that aim.
But I have very many reservations about the effectiveness of the Bill in meeting and overcoming the problems which it purports to solve. Deputy Fitzpatrick and the Fine Gael Party apparently share these doubts. Deputy Fitzpatrick told us that he had studied the Bill carefully, read it a number of times and discussed it with other people. But after all this he said that Fine Gael cannot and will not support this Bill.
An examination of the Bill shows how it would fail to achieve the aim of its authors — if indeed the control of land prices to the satisfaction of all concerned is the aim. Not only would the Bill fail in its objective but it would produce a situation where local authorities would be hesitant about, or even opposed to, the exercise of the powers given to them in the Bill. And if they exercised these powers the effect would be to bring about a complete standstill in all private dealings in land in the designated areas.
Let me give a picture of what would happen as a consequence. The building industry would be starved of land in the designated areas and would immediately generate pressure to have planning permissions given for development outside the designated areas. Such pressure would in turn cause a demand for land outside the designated areas and because there would be a free market there, prices would spiral upwards. Meanwhile in the designated areas the local authorities would be trying to overcome legal and other difficulties, not the least of which would be financial, in trying to acquire development land either by agreement or compulsorily. In this situation, areas which properly should be the scene of new development or renewal would be blighted, and developers would be desperately trying to buy land and obtain planning permissions outside the designated areas where local authorities do not wish development to take place because of lack of services or for some other good reason.
Land prices in the free market area outside the designated areas would climb. This would mean that the people expropriated at existing use value in the designated areas would find it very hard or even impossible to compete for land in the open market areas with the developers and speculators who would be in competition for any land that might be on the market.
Thus the Bill would fail to achieve the objective of making land for development available at a reasonable price. Not only would it have failed in this aim but it would bring about a complete stagnation in private development in the designated areas and a chaotic and artificially inflated property market in the non-designated areas. Possibly it would end up by causing a collapse of a big section of the building industry, and the price to be paid for this disorder and instability would be met by the many dispossessed former property owners in the designated areas most of whom would not be able to afford to invest in other property in the free market area. It does not require any stretch of the imagination to be sure that these people will have recourse to the courts to redress their grievances.
By now it should be clear to the House that the problems to be solved are many and complex. It is not just simply a matter of control of land prices, difficult as that may be. Many important factors are linked together and problems cannot be solved by attempting to deal with just one of these factors.
One of the main aspects of our economy associated with land and its availability and cost is the price of housing. Deputies on the opposite side, during the debate on this Bill have taken it on themselves to criticise the Government in relation to the increasing cost of houses. Last week, Deputy Fitzpatrick made a number of sweeping statements on housing. He referred to soaring house prices constituting a serious problem, particularly for young married couples. The purchase of one's own home has generally been the most costly transaction in which one is ever likely to be involved, but when the Deputy refers to "soaring" house prices he conveniently ignores the facts. When Fianna Fáil resumed office in July 1977, we discovered that the controls on new house prices, as operated by the certificate of reasonable value system which had been introduced in February 1973, again by a Fianna Fáil Government, had not been strengthened in the interim by the Coalition Government. This was contrary to what one should have expected after a period of rapid price excalation. Indeed the controls had been weakened by the drastic curtailment of eligibility for State new house grants by the Coalition in 1976.
The Minister immediately extended the certificate of reasonable value system to all grant type new houses provided for sale and also to flats. The effect of this and the liberalisation of the scheme of new house grants was to increase substantially the proportion of new private houses brought within the scope of house price control. Again, let me say that when positive action by the Government was needed in August 1978 it was taken promptly against a background of house prices rising at an unacceptable rate during the first half of 1978. Controls over building societies lending for the purchase of new houses were extended in August 1979. Yet again in 1979, the first housing Act since 1970, the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1979, was passed. It provides a comprehensive statutory framework for the operation of the CRV system. All these measures contributed to a drop in house prices in the latter half of 1979. While prices are now increasing again the rate of increase is broadly in line with increases in earnings and costs over the past year.
Deputy Fitzpatrick also queried the extent of the reductions achieved under the certificate of reasonable value system. In 1979 the total of all price reductions achieved by the CRV system reached almost £2 million, affecting some 2,200 houses. The corresponding figures for the first four months of 1980 were over £1.1 million worth of reductions affecting some 530 houses. In many other cases purchasers benefited by builders opting for fixed prices instead of price variation clauses or by builders deferring the date of operation of price variation clauses.
The Deputy also referred to houses passing out of reach of more and more people. He may be forgetting the fact that the number of private houses completed has jumped from 16,700 in the last full year of the Coalition to 18,200 in 1977, 19,400 in 1978 and an all time record of 20,300 last year. This substantial increase has been due in large measure to Government action in bringing SDA loan and income limits up to realistic levels on three occasions in less than three years — they had been allowed to remain unchanged between September 1973 and mid 1977 despite increases in house costs, prices and earnings during that period — and also by the introduction of a subsidy to building societies who are the largest contributors of house purchase finance. Deputies will recall that the Coalition abolished a building society interest subsidy in 1976.
The Deputy also said that many local authorities who service land sell it at a big profit. Because of the context in which he was speaking I assume that he is referring only to building sites for private houses. The disposal of land by local authorities is governed by the Local Authorities (Borrowing and Management) Regulations. Generally the local authority are required to dispose of building sites for a price not less than a sum equivalent to the cost to the authority of the acquisition and development of the site, less the value of any Exchequer subsidy payable. In practice local authorities generally sell building sites, whether subsidisable or not, for a price that will allow them to break even on the operation.
Section 23 of this Bill says that the compensation shall be the amount which the lands might be expected to realise if sold on the open market and on a date when the question of compensation is referred to. If I went to any farmer or landowner and offered him that kind of money, I would get a four grain fork very likely. I have been a member of a local authority for many years and I know that if a local authority wish to acquire land and cannot do so by negotiation they can issue a compulsory purchase order is confirmed by the Minister the owner of the land has the right to go to arbitration regarding the price. Over the years it has been shown that the amount offered by local authorities has been a lot higher than the figure recommended by the arbitrator. Section 23 of this Bill does not allow for this. The land in question might be disused or in bad condition and we must consider what the effect of this Bill will be in regard to such land. I do not believe it would be constitutional to peg the value of the land to existing use value. I do not wish to get into the legal field but it is my opinion that this Bill is unconstitutional.
If we pass the Bill we can send it to the Supreme Court for a decision.
I do not believe in wasting time and money. If the Bill is contested in court it cannot be implemented. We should examine all aspects to see if we can introduce a Bill which will stand up.
Another aspect of our way of life associated with the matter is land use planning. Already other speakers have pointed out how, under this Bill, local elected representatives would be required to mark out the lands which would come within the designated areas. These lands would, in all probability, be lands already zoned under our planning system for development. A well established and accepted concept enshrined in our planning code is that a planning authority in refusing planning permission or in revoking or modifying a planning permission already granted are restricted to considering only the proper planning and development of the area. The Bill sets this principle aside and replaces it with a new concept that a planning authority may refuse planning permission for the development of land simply on the grounds that such land is in an area designated under the Bill. Presumably the intention is that normal planning criteria such as those relating to housing density, commercial and industrial needs, amenity and other factors will no longer count in a designated area. What will matter is that the local authority will have power, under the Bill, to expropriate property owners in designated areas and compensate them on the basis of existing use value.
The Bill provides that where planning permission is refused for the reason that the development is proposed for land in a designated area, the landowner is not entitled to compensation from the planning authority for the consequent reduction in value of that land.
Also in the matter of compensation the Bill provides that in a designated area all land would be acquired by the local authority at existing use value. It is more than likely that such acquisition would be done by compulsion rather than by way of negotiation. The owners of the land would be compensated not by way of a price that could be obtained for that land on the open market — and remember I am speaking about land zoned for development by the local authority in their development plan — and compensation would be on the basis of what would be paid for the land if it could never be used for any purpose other than as at present.
Perhaps the Bill would appear to give local authorities greater powers than they have at present to acquire land banks in designated areas, but unfortunately the Bill does not tell us how and where the local authorities are to get the vast amount of money needed by them to carry out the obligation under the Bill to acquire all land in the designated areas. The Minister has already referred to the fact that private housing requires an average of 19,000 sites a year. Presumably the intention in the Bill is that most of these sites would be in the designated areas, otherwise the Bill would be absolutely meaningless. Added to this, the local authorities would have to acquire all the land necessary in designated areas for industrial and commercial development and for urban renewal, as well as for their own housing and other needs such as community amenities. The Minister has given a figure of £12 million as the cost of local authorities' land requirements for housing sites alone for one year at existing use value. The amount needed by them for carrying out the obligations of the Bill in respect of overall land purchase for five years would be in the order of £120 million.
I note that the Bill proposes to give responsibility to local elected representatives to decide which lands will come within designated areas and which will not. It may be suggested that these new proposals would in effect only be an extension of the powers and duties already conferred on elected members under planning legislation. There is, however, a major difference between designation under this Bill and land use zoning provisions in development plans. Designation by elected members under this Bill would automatically result in that land being acquired, most likely by compulsion, with compensation, not based on what the land is worth on the open market but on what the Bill calls "existing use value". In other words, the potential of the land is ignored. In our way of life this would be very unpopular and I cannot see many local authorities adopting such a scheme.
There are, of course, many anomalies in this Bill. I would like to mention one by way of example. The Bill provides that local authorities shall have power to designate land and acquire such land which will be used for housing or factories within five years. It is also proposed to make this a reserved function. The compensation payable will be "existing use value". In formulating the Bill has any thought been given to how this power will be operated in practice? What about the householder in Sandymount who has a large garden attached to his house and who wants to erect another house on it? What about the person who has an old Victorian house, who wants to knock it down and build two or three houses on the site. Will he have to sell to Dublin Corporation and buy it back from the corporation, paying them their administrative and legal costs? What value will a local authority put on a garden? These are some of the questions that arise. We are as anxious as any party to overcome the problems that arise in this area but it is not easy. Our party, and most Members of this House, accept that the rights of owners are far-reaching. This has always been the case under our Constitution.
Last Thursday evening in this House Deputy Tully accused the Minister for the Environment of waffling and doing nothing. The Deputy was not correct. The Minister spoke out against the Bill before the House and he pointed out the provisions he was opposing. True, he did not go through the Bill section by section; that is not the purpose of a Second Stage debate. The Minister concluded his remarks by telling the House that the problem was being examined but that there were still complex issues to be solved.
The Minister also pointed out that any Bill proposing to deal with building land prices would have to be workable and capable of implementation by local authorities. The necessary finance would have to be found and the Bill would have to be framed within the provisions of the Constitution and existing laws. Anybody with doubts about the Minister's response to the Bill should read his speech. He will see that the Minister dealt with the matter in a positive and commonsense fashion and he showed to anybody with an open mind that the Bill would be quite unworkable. The Minister said enough to show that if the Labour Party were in office they would not bring forward such an unrealistic and unworkable piece of legislation. We know that their former colleagues in Government would not support such a Bill.
I am not in the legal profession but I have been a member of a local authority for years. I am as anxious as anybody to get over the problem with regard to the acquisition of land. I have yet to see a Bill or any other practical way of acquiring land other than the method we use now. I admit it is a slow process but it is the law of the land. I would remind the House that the Minister said the Government are considering the matter to see if something can be done.
In the short time available to me to speak I shall refer to only a few points. It is agreed in this House that some legislation is necessary to curb the actions of speculators in this area. I, too, have been a member of a local authority for a long time. I know that the authority of which I am a member by carrying out water supply and sewerage schemes have made millionaires out of certain people. Unjust profits have been put into the pockets of such people because the local authority have had to carry out necessary works. Any reasonable person must agree that speculators must not be allowed to continue to make vast profits merely because a local authority have to carry out public works.
The Minister told us that he agreed with controlling land prices. He said something must be done to stop the dreadful speculation that has been taking place. Yet, the two Ministers who have spoken have not said what they can do; they have spent their time saying what they cannot do. The major cause for the scandalous increase in the price of housing can be traced back to the price of land. If this House cannot exercise authority and introduce the necessary legislation it is worthless. It is preventing ordinary, decent citizens from getting a house of their own. Everyone knows that in the past few years the increasing cost of houses has put them out of reach for many people. The Ministers who spoke did not suggest what could be done to rectify the situation. I do not think there is any dispute that urgent action is needed and I should like to have heard from the Government side what they intend doing. Apparently they are going to oppose our Bill. The public are entitled to know what the Government intend doing about this crying scandal in our society today.
In the northern part of my county there are many examples of situations where the local authority have no real planning power. All the local authorities throughout the country are reacting to the action of speculators. We are saying that designated land should be acquired by the local authority so that they may produce a plan for the area that would include provision for factories, schools, community centres and playing areas. The town of Laois increased from a mere village to a town of 8,000 people and there are no facilities necessary for these people to live. The planning authority responded only to the applications of speculators who were ready to build houses just for profit and did not care whether facilities were provided for these people. Now there is no land available for these facilities. This is the kind of thing we want to end in this Bill. The local authority should not be in the position where they have to react to planning applications by speculators who are out to make an easy million.
The local authority has designated an area adjacent to the town of Naas on which to build a town as big as Naas but if the land is not controlled by the local authority it will be built on by individual builders and in the final analysis the local authority will have no say in the development of that area. Recreational facilities will not be available in that new town because of people who are only interested in getting rich quick by providing houses at the highest prices and are not interested in providing recreational or other facilities. The local authority should sell to only genuine builders and should insist on facilities being provided. They should insist on local authority houses being provided as a first priority.
Land should be designated for local authority houses as a priority because these houses are for people who are unable to provide their own homes. After that, the local authority should provide sites for people to build private houses and the remaining land could be given to private builders at a price which they would have to reflect in the price of the houses. Playing facilities, community centres, churches, schools and so on should also be provided.
This legislation has been needed over the past few years and it should have been introduced long ago. From the speeches of the two Ministers I gather that they have no plans in this area as they have not put forward one constructive suggestion. The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment said that one would not get away with offering the existing use value for land. Surely the Minister is not suggesting that a person can treble the value of his land just because it is designated for building.
Deputy Bermingham should conclude.
The existing use price of the land should be a basis for what one would pay for it, otherwise somebody could get three times the value of his land just because a local authority decided that it should be designated as building land.
I have not enough time to respond to all the points but I note from the Minister's speech that the Government are in agreement in principle with the objective of the Bill and that the Government are at present considering possible methods of achieving it.
The Minister and the other Fianna Fáil Deputies who spoke on this debate are not in agreement with the principles of this measure. The Government speakers have consistently represented the rights of property over the rights of people. In every instance where there was either a choice between the property provisions of our Constitution and the human rights provisions, the Government speakers did not hesitate to put the rights of property over the rights of people. If the Labour Party are forced to make a choice between the rights of people and the rights of property they will always choose the rights of people without hesitation. I would like to think that Fianna Fáil Deputies will say in their clinics exactly what they have been saying here to the thousands of people who cannot afford the repayments on their mortgages or cannot get on the housing queues of the local authorities.
The Minister claims that he is in agreement with the provisions of the Bill and is trying to do something with it. The Minister stated that there has been a long search for a solution. It is like searching for the holy grail and the Government are no nearer a solution than they were seven years ago when the Kenny report was published. I regret that Deputy O'Donoghue, who was on that committee, did not come in here to contribute on this Bill. No Bill is prepared as was conceded by the Minister of State in reply to a question by Deputy O'Brien some time ago. In relation to the Kenny report the Minister stated that the existing use value plus 25 per cent would probably prove inadequate and went on to say that the market value, in other words as much as one can get, is a much fairer system than the system proposed in this Bill. The Minister is defending the present system which is guaranteed by the Fianna Fáil 1937 Constitution which gives people the right to make money out of the misery of the homeless. The Minister in his response admits that not only does he not agree with Kenny but that the Fianna Fáil Party believe that the market system is fairer than anything we have proposed.
The Minister then said that the local councillors have no role. I agree with that but it is because Fianna Fáil have eroded their authority in so many areas. Fianna Fáil are dismissing the local authorities in relation to their ability to decide which areas require to be developed. The Minister said that the impact on the building industry could be chaotic. The Minister had enough private representations from the CIF since he became Minister to know just how chaotic the building industry has been due to the non-operation of the CRV system apart from anything else. I do not share the Minister's view but would argue it at length with him if I had the time.
Deputy Fox attempted to suggest that because Fine Gael saw fit to abstain on this Bill we were divided on it. Fine Gael proposed to abstain on this measure but Deputy Moore the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach stated that it is immoral for people to make huge profits from land because it has become a scarce commodity. I would remind the House that he is Minister of State to the Taoiseach, Deputy Haughey. The record shows clearly what is implied in that statement. That is the division in that house. They are trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. They have no proposals or amendments to make to the principle of the Bill. They said they were in agreement with the principle of the Bill and then went on to argue about the rights of property. They spoke in long and defensive terms on a speech written and rewritten and redelivered by the four Fianna Fáil Deputies and two Ministers of State who replied to the debate.
What is the argument in favour of this Bill? It seems to have been lost in the rush to defend the rights of property and the rights of a minority of people in the country. We are simply saying that in the natural growth of an urban community the additional value that is created and placed on adjoining and surrounding land is created in the first instance by the community. It belongs to the community and the community should not be placed in such a position that a private individual, by virtue of his accidental location on the edge of a town, can capture legally under the provisions of the Constitution and the fair market system to which the Minister referred, that additional community value and sell it back to the community. That is the essence of what we are talking about. There is no expropriation and no confiscation proposed in the Bill. There is, however, something else: the recapture of community created value which, over the years, has been hived off by accidentally located landowners and not so accidentally placed land speculators.
There was an attempt by some Members to suggest that the Bill would affect the farming community in the most dramatic way. I want the House to be clear that that is not so. The number of farmers directly or indirectly affected by these provisions would be marginal relative to the total number of farmers in the country. The number of agricultural holdings that would be damaged in terms of their agricultural potential would be very small as a percentage of the total farming community. In the final analysis the safeguard in terms of democracy, as far as the Labour Party are concerned, is that it would be the local councillors in their own community who would decide on how much land they needed or wanted to acquire over a five-year period. Unlike the Fianna Fáil Party we trust the local councillors and their judgment and recognise that they face a ballot box every five years. The bureaucrats and county and city managers do not. We are prepared to place that trust, in the way the Minister is uniquely not prepared to do, in the hands of the local councillors and say: "You have the powers. Exercise them and answer for them in five years' time."
The farming community will not be threatened by any of these provisions and there is in the compensating clause adequate provision to enable the replacement or removal of a farmer from affected land to another area with adequate means of compensation — in the words of the Bill, "as the tribunal might consider just". The composition of the land tribunal will be made up professionally and chaired by a High Court judge. The attempt to suggest that somehow or other the land of farmers would be endangered by a form of expropriation, confiscation or whatever other scandalous phrase was used by Deputies Fox and Andrews, is an attempt at a political lie. Let us nail it in the House.
The only people seriously affected, in negative terms from their point of view, would be the handful that would not fit into the seats and rooms in this building out of the population of over three million people, the few hundred people whose biggest problem when the Coalition were in power was that they might have to pay wealth tax. They would not fill this room and they, the speculators, are the only people who might be affected. How would they be affected? They would be getting the value of what they had and not the inflated community created value which they did not turn one sod to create. Can the Government defend that? Is this the republican party? Where is the famous phrase of Donogh O'Malley — if you forget the men with the open-neck shirts? How many men with open-neck shirts will benefit from the protection of the free market system that everyone over there has consistently argued for in the House? How many of them are homeless tonight? How many of them are struggling and have their wives out getting additional wages to pay for mortgages because of the price of land? How many of their children do not go to a decent school because the cost of acquiring the land cannot be met by the parish in the first place? How many of their children do not have a decent transport system because CIE have not got out there yet? How many of their kids are knocked down on roads because there are no decent playing fields or recreational facilities because local authorities are not getting enough money from the Departments of Education and Environment to provide them? Yet the Government defend a handful of private, anonymous, invisible landowners in the interests of private property and the rights of the Constitution?
Is this what the whole struggle of the Irish people over the years has been about? Is this what Tone, Connolly, Lalor, Pearse or anyone of the saints of the republican or socialist movement we so freely invoke were serious about, to give to Irish native born speculators greater security under an Irish republican Constitution than mother England ever gave them? That is what we are building into the laws of the land if we refuse to respond to the Second Stage call for a vote on this Bill.
Why did the last Government not bring in such a Bill?
They spent too much time remedying 16 years of Fianna Fáil——
Why did they not implement Kenny?
I will tell you why.
It was gathering dust for four years.
It was not. The only thing that was done with it was done in our time.
Deputy Quinn has only one minute to conclude, without interruption.
I honestly do not believe that there is a single Fianna Fáil Deputy who would not, in his heart of hearts, really support the principle of this if he were free to do so. I am prepared to accept that there are many ways in which the Bill could be improved and I would welcome a response from the Government, with their 83 seats, to sit around the table in this room and under the Constitution lawfully and peacefully try and reach a solution. That is the offer because Kenny was not adequate as you, Sir, have found it not to be adequate.
Regretfully, I can accurately anticipate the response of the House when the division bells ring and the lobbies fill up. But, I say to all the Members of the House that some day in this land and under our Constitution a law like this will become the democratic law of this land. How long will we have to wait and how much misery and hardship will there be between now and then before we have the courage to implement the Proclamation of 1916 and all the hopes and aspirations of the people who went before us?
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 15; Níl, 59.
Tá
- Bermingham, Joseph.
- Cluskey, Frank.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Desmond, Barry.
- Desmond, Eileen.
- Horgan, John.
- Kavanagh, Liam.
- Lipper, Mick.
- O'Connell, John.
- O'Leary, Michael.
- Pattison, Séamus.
- Quinn, Ruairi.
- Ryan, John J.
- Treacy, Seán.
- Tully, James.
Níl
- Ahern, Bertie.
- Ahern, Kit.
- Andrews, David.
- Andrews, Niall.
- Aylward, Liam.
- Barrett, Sylvester.
- Brady, Vincent.
- Callanan, John.
- Doherty, Seán.
- Farrell, Joe.
- Faulkner, Pádraig.
- Filgate, Eddie.
- Fitzgerald, Gene.
- Fitzpatrick, Tom (Dublin South Central).
- Fitzsimons, James N.
- Flynn, Pádraig.
- Fox, Christopher J.
- Gallagher, Dennis.
- Gallagher, James.
- Gibbons, Jim.
- Haughey, Charles J.
- Herbert, Michael.
- Hussey, Thomas.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Kenneally, William.
- Killeen, Tim.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- Leonard, Tom.
- Calleary, Seán.
- Cogan, Barry.
- Colley, George.
- Collins, Gerard.
- Conaghan, Hugh.
- Connolly, Gerard.
- Crinion, Brendan.
- Daly, Brendan.
- Leyden, Terry.
- Loughnane, William.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacSharry, Ray.
- Meaney, Tom.
- Molloy, Robert.
- Moore, Seán.
- Morley, P.J.
- Murphy, Ciarán P.
- Nolan, Tom.
- Noonan, Michael.
- O'Connor, Timothy C.
- O'Hanlon, Rory.
- O'Kennedy, Michael.
- O'Leary, John.
- Power, Paddy.
- Reynolds, Albert.
- Smith, Michael.
- Tunney, Jim.
- Walsh, Joe.
- Woods, Michael J.
- Wyse, Pearse.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies B. Desmond and Horgan; Níl, Deputies Moore and Ahern.
Question declared lost.
The Bill is refused a Second Reading.
Another victory for the speculators.
Apparently all the Labour Members did not agree with the Bill.