Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 3 Mar 1983

Vol. 340 No. 9

Joint Committee on Building Land: Motion.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment (Mr. Quinn)

I move:

(1) That a Select Committee consisting of 13 members of Dáil Éireann be appointed to be joined with a Select Committee to be appointed by Seanad Éireann to form a Joint Committee of both Houses of the Oireachtas (which shall be called the Joint Committee on Building Land)—

(a) to consider and make recommendations regarding possible legislative and other measures to deal, in the interests of the common good, with the supply and cost of building land (including land within and adjacent to urban areas), having regard, in particular, to:

(i) the Constitution and judgments of the Superior Courts in regard to the relevant articles thereof;

(ii) the Report of the Committee on the Price of Building Land (Prl.3632);

(iii) tax legislation in relation to profits or gains from dealings in, disposals of, or development of, land;

(iv) the operation of the Local Government (Planning and Development) Acts, 1963 to 1982;

(v) the Local Government (Building Land) Bill, 1982; and

(b) to report on the merits and demerits of any measures considered, with particular reference to:

(i) their constitutionality;

(ii) legal and administrative practicality;

(iii) financial and economic implications;

(iv) likely effects on the cost of housing and on other forms of development.

(2) That the Joint Committee shall have power to send for persons, papers and records.

(3) That the Joint Committee, previous to the commencement of business, shall elect one of its members to be Chairman, who shall have only one vote.

(4) That all questions in the Joint Committee shall be determined by a majority of votes of the members present and voting and in the event of there being an equality of votes the question shall be decided in the negative.

(5) That every report which the Joint Committee proposes to make shall, on adoption by the Joint Committee be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas forthwith whereupon the Joint Committee shall be empowered to print and publish such report together with such related documents as it thinks fit.

(6) That 7 members of the Joint Committee shall form a quorum of whom at least 3 shall be members of Dáil Éireann and at least 2 shall be members of Seanad Éireann.

(7) That the Joint Committee report before 31st December, 1983.

Mr. Haughey

Are the terms exactly the same as before?

Mr. Quinn

Exactly the same terms as moved originally by the Tánaiste about two weeks ago in the House.

Mr. Kelly

The fact that this is on the Order Paper a second time in substance gives me an opportunity to say in a little more detail what I said briefly before.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair is advised that on the expediency motion a discussion took place. A message has come from the Seanad to the effect that that House passed the motion. It is now a matter of establishing the Joint Committee and the Chair is advised that we cannot have a repetition of what was said on the previous occasion.

Mr. Kelly

I have no intention of repeating anything I said on a former occasion but I am anxious to ask the Minister of State a few questions since the House has been asked to appoint a Joint Committee and we have an item of business before us which, as far as I know, is an ordinary item of business.

An Ceann Comhairle

It is the second instalment of an item of business.

Mr. Kelly

I should like to ask the Minister of State if he will inform the House now or at some time more convenient to himself about the following matters. Firstly, what will it cost to service this Joint Committee, because the setting up of any Committee involves certain expenditure of public money in the provision of public servants who are taken away from their ordinary work? Those officials are not junior public servants but people who must know and understand something about the substance of the matter under the Committee's attention. What will the Joint Committee cost the public? I would like that sum to include what may be anticipated to be the cost of printing and publishing the ultimate report of the Joint Committee.

Secondly, I would like to know whether it is the intention of the Joint Committee — the House has been asked to give the Joint Committee the requisite powers — to call witnesses, ask for documents and, in general, invite representations in regard to the subject matter of the Joint Committee. If that is the case I should like to know which witnesses the Minister of State has in mind, which documents will be available to him which were not available to his predecessor in 1973 and which evidence in general is likely to be available to him, via this Joint Committee, which can be got in no cheaper way and was not available to the committee which sat under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Kenny a decade ago.

I should like to know whether it is proposed that the report of this inter-party Committee, the object of which in general I take to be to spread evenly the odium of any disagreeable recommendation it may ultimately make, will be regarded by the Government as binding upon them, or whether it will again be something that will sit around for ten years being looked at and examined. I should like to know what is the point of going through this pantomime of setting up a Joint Committee when, as far as I know, nothing new has emerged which will be of any material importance to it, except for a small number of decisions in the High Court and Supreme Court which are public documents, available in the Attorney General's office for his advice on the legal dimensions of this question, which, I admit, are considerable.

Mr. Haughey

I should like to make a brief comment. We were not aware that there would be any opposition to this motion. We support the establishment of the Joint Committee because there is fairly unanimous agreement that the Kenny Report as such was defective in many ways. It was the opinion of legal and constitutional lawyers, and others who know about these matters, that that report was inoperable in many of its recommendations. The problem still remains, the problem of the price of building land. I would put the case made by Deputy Kelly the other way round: rather than anything having changed in the situation, it is still the same and the problem is still there. The cost of building land is still a major factor inhibiting the housing of our people. Therefore, we fully support the establishment of this Joint Committee and we hope it can finally and in the ultimate give us some conclusions, some way of tackling this major social problem.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment (Mr. Quinn)

Deputy Kelly previously raised some points in regard to this important matter. The House is aware that in effect this is a carryover from a commitment made to the House by Fianna Fáil when in Government. They were attempting to find a detailed solution to a problem on which there appeared to be all-party agreement in principle but not all-party agreement on what form the solution should take. For that reason it was felt that an all-party committee would be the best way to tease out the legislative solution. One of the reasons for that was because, in the absence of all-party agreement, opposition from one side of the House or another was a signal from within to outside the land market; and clearly that would make a bad situation — we are all agreed it is bad — worse, as has been the unfortunate and extensively documented experience in the British land market since 1947. Deputy Kelly on numerous occasions has advised us to learn from mistakes that have been made across the water and in this instance I do not think we should make the mistake that was made there. About seven separate legislative attempts were made in Britain to deal with what is a complex matter.

I hesitate to give constitutional or legal advice to a Member as eminent as Deputy Kelly, but in relation to the Kenny Report one of the principal pillars upon which the majority opinion of the Kenny report rested was the fact that in 1973 the controlled tenant legislation was deemed to be constitutional. Therefore if that legislation was deemed to be constitutional, it was considered that Kenny's majority report would also meet the test of constitutionality. That manifestly is no longer the case, since we have been through the courts in relation to that matter. In fact, the House in the last 18 months put through two pieces of legislation because the Supreme Court rejected the first one. On the same point there have been a number of Supreme Court judgments since 1973 which give rise to some doubts in relation to the interpretation of property rights under the Constitution and, for that matter, it is no longer sufficient in legal terms to rest one's case on Kenny alone.

In addition, the Kenny Report addressed itself exclusively to the problem of agricultural land becoming urban or development land for the first time and did not address itself at any stage to the question of existing built-up land, inner city land or derelict land which was already developed. It is clear from a matter raised on the Order of Business by Deputy Gregory that in most of our towns and cities there is a pressing need to come to terms with the redevelopment of land which has become derelict or passed through its first commercial or economic use. It is for those reasons that the House should conduct its business through this Joint Committee.

In regard to the question of the cost I should like to tell Deputy Kelly that there will not be any extra cost to the taxpayer for the servicing of the Joint Committee. The people who will service it will be full-time employees of the public service and therefore no additional costs will arise.

In relation to submissions and so on, all local authorities have already been requested — this committee was set up before the dissolution of the last Dáil — to send in submissions and to the best of my knowledge about 15 to 20 of them at present have already done so. The major institutions who would have a direct interest in this, such as the institutes of engineers and architects, the ICTU and so forth, have all been requested to submit their considered views on this matter.

I think that I have answered all the questions that Deputy Kelly raised. In view of the debate that has taken place here, perhaps unexpectedly, I urge that the political parties on all sides of the House would move as fast as possible to nominate Members to participate in the work of this committee. As the Leader of the Opposition has said, this problem has got worse and not eased since 1973 when the committee's report was submitted to the then Government.

Question put and agreed to.