I would like to reply as briefly but comprehensively as I can to points made by various Senators. First of all I thank them all collectively for their kind wishes at my coming to the Seanad today and on my appointment.
Let me say that the terms of reference for this committee were drafted by the previous Minister for the Environment, Deputy Burke, with the agreement in part of both myself and Deputy Peter Barry who was spokesperson at the time for the Fine Gael Party. Therefore, the terms of reference have already a fair measure of agreement. We changed the deadline but not the length of time which Deputy Burke originally gave to the workings of that committee, extending it from September 1983 to December 1983 to take account of the recent political changes and elections.
The date in question, to reply to Senator Robinson, is the final date as far as we are concerned for the report of this committee. That was the understanding on the previous occasion and it is definitely my understanding on this occasion.
The role of this committee as far as I am concerned will be, as Senator O'Donoghue indicated in his contribution, the role of basically drafting the legislation for both Houses. It is in effect taking Committee Stage of legislation in advance of Second Stage. All of the political parties in this House are agreed in principle on the desirability of doing something based on the Kenny Report and on the commitment to deal with the problem of land speculation. In so far as the political parties have a common agreement, the common agreement is analagous to Second Stage where something should be done on the matter.
I welcome very much the committed contributions made by a number of Senators. I suggest that the members of this committee will take on, as Senator O'Leary said, a substantial volume of work. Any Member of the Seanad who becomes a member of this committee is committing himself to a substantial amount of work the volume of which will in the main be centred around drafting legislation that is administratively effective, without bureaucratic hindrance of any kind and clearly designed to have the broadest possible agreement within our society with the desired objective of eliminating the problems that have arisen because of the lack of control of the price of building land.
Senator O'Toole in his contribution made reference to the role of house builders and speculators in the building trade generally. I would support basically what I think he was trying to say, but which frequently, I regret to say, comes across differently from other people, not necessarily from Senator O'Toole. I have always made the distinction between the house builders — the building contractor and the building developer who leave something on the ground after they have finished, who add value to the community wealth of our society — and the land speculator who adds no value whatsoever, who simply creams off the value which he in the first instance did not do anything to create. It is to be regretted that, in the short-term phraseology that develops in our society, the legitimate building industry is frequently confused with the speculator. A speculator in this instance is someone who is not adding to the value but simply extracting the value that the community created in the first instance. To that extent I share the sentiment of what Senator O'Toole said.
Senator McGuinness was worried about the time frame within which this committee would work. I have dealt with that by saying that we are concerned primarily with legislation, and the committee are expected to complete their work by 31 December 1983.
Senator O'Donoghue, as Senator O'Leary said, was a member of the committee who produced the Kenny Report, and I looked forward to his contribution in this area. He, in particular, is aware of the changes that have taken place, particularly the legal changes regarding the interpretation by the Supreme Court of the constitutionality of certain legislation which at the time of the writing of the Kenny Report was deemed to be constitutional but subsequently was found not to be so.
Senator O'Leary talked about the desirability of achieving consensus. I support this view to the extent that, like Senator O'Donoghue, I think at the end of the day that there will be differences of opinion. As Senator O'Donoghue said, reasonable people at the end of the day will hold reasonable differences of opinion. It is essential that we maximise the agreement in so far as that is possible so as not to disrupt the land market unduly. Experience since 1947, particularly in the United Kingdom, was such that there have been about four to five separate legislative attempts to regulate this market. It became highly partisan to the extent that landowners and land developers deliberately held land during the holding of office of one administration in the hope that a change of Government would bring about a change in the market. That in the short term had a damaging effect upon the well being of people who depended upon the local authority or the housing developer directly to provide housing for them, because it froze land in certain areas.
We should be capable of learning from the experience of other countries, particularly our next-door neighbour, in this regard, and not fall into that trap. To that extent I understand and recognise the expertise and I compliment Senator O'Leary on his contribution and on his limited declaration of interest, which is a very healthy precedent to establish in both Houses in this regard. However, I would not like to see consensus confused with a postponement of any kind of enactment of legislation until such time as we get total unanimous agreement. I do not expect that to be achieved, but I expect that this House and the other House can achieve a working consensus that will result in legislation that not only has the support of the majority of the people but also is seen to be a workable legal instrument, which is also a factor that must be taken into account.
Senator Ferris in his contribution referred to the historical origins of this committee, and he was right in saying that to a certain extent the Labour Party was the godfather of it in so far as the proposal following the second tabling of this as a Private Members' Bill — it was first tabled in 1980 — from the Deputy Leader of the Fine Gael Party, Deputy Peter Barry, that a committee be established was accepted in principle by me on behalf of the Labour Party and was graciously accepted by the then Minister, Deputy Burke. The fact that a by-election was being held in Dublin West at the time — which constituency had been the victim of unauthorised and highly speculative land development — had little or nothing to do with the readiness of both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to conceive such a committee. Nevertheless it proved to be an interesting lever in ensuring that the readiness of the two major political parties to contribute towards a constructive solution was somewhat heightened.
Senator Lanigan raised legitimate points about the role of the State, both at local and national level through the Department of the Environment and the local authorities, in ensuring that there is an adequate supply of serviced land, zoned or otherwise, that will enable development to take place, whether we control the price of that land or not.
That brings me to the general problem, the background against which this legislation is absolutely urgent. It is now 20 years since planning legislation was effectually brought into this country in 1963. The 1961 census, if my memory serves me right, was the first census since the foundation of the State that showed our population stabilising and beginning to grow, certainly in the larger urban areas. In 1973 the Kenny Report reported on what was then the scandal of uncontrolled unbridled and untaxed land speculation in the suburban areas. Ten years later, in 1983, we are now attempting as an Oireachtas as distinct from an administration of the day to deal with the problem. In the intervening years our population has become the fastest growing population of any State in the EEC and that of Dublin, for example, is growing at the rate of approximately 20,000 a year. The whole process of settlement on this island is going through a total and radical transformation such as occurs only once in the lifetime of any nation. We are shifting the basis upon which this island lives from a pattern of rural settlement which grew up over a period of at least 300 years to a transformation which will change the face of this country by the end of this century.
Statistically, in 1910 or thereabouts 20 per cent of the population of this island lived in what we would classify as urban areas, that is towns of 1,500 or more, with 80 per cent living in rural areas. By the year 2000 which is now closer to us than the date of the assassination of President Kennedy, that proportion will be virtually reversed, 80 per cent of the population living in what we would call urban areas and 20 per cent or thereabouts in rural areas. That will happen in the next 17 years. Already the ratio of urban to rural is somewhere in the region of 55:45 per cent.
The problems that we are now experiencing in the inner cities of Cork, Limerick and Dublin and to a lesser extent Galway and Waterford were forecast with grim accuracy by every urban specialist as far back as 15 years ago, because the ingredients that brought about the problems which we now have were self-evident and had brought about exactly the same problems in countries like Spain, France, America and Great Britain. Therefore, we simply can no longer turn our heads away from this problem because if we do this problem will, as it has begun already to do so, devour ourselves. Lest anybody thinks that this is a Dublin problem, I would refer him to the tragedy of the instance that occurred in the streets of Limerick over the duration of Christmas. If we had stood up ten years ago in this House and said it would be unsafe for grown men and women to walk the streets of Dublin we would have been laughed at. We can no longer be laughed at today. Part of that problem relates to our failure to deal with the reality of urbanisation. We cannot begin to deal with the problem of urbanisation unless we begin to deal with the problem of land.
I want now to turn away from that theme of mine for which I could have the Seanad sitting all day next Wednesday and the following Wednesday and the Wednesday after that if the House so desired, and to address myself to the three political parties in this House and to the Independents. All political parties are on record as saying that they agree in principle with the need to do something in this area. The Labour Party have a clear specific policy proposal in the form and shape of a Bill. Nobody criticised the principle of that Bill in the two debates that took place in the other House. Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael said that while they supported the principle of the Bill they had reservations about its sections, methodology and effectiveness. Individuals Independents — I am thinking in particular of Mr. Jim Kemmy, the former Deputy, who made a contribution during the debate the second time around in the Dáil. I cannot from memory recall if any of the Independents spoke the first time the Bill was debated in May and June 1980. I know from the contribution made by Senator McGuinness and the interest expressed by Senator Brendan Ryan that there is considerable interest in this among Independent Members of this House.
The setting up of this committee — I want to be quite clear about my own commitment in relation to it — is a specific follow-through to the debates which took place earlier in this House. I am saying as a Labour member of this particular joint administration that this is a unique opportunity for the members of both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to flesh out, formulate and work out the details of a Bill, the principle of which has already been agreed to. As Senator Ferris said in relation to the setting up of this committee prior to the sudden dissolution of the previous administration, we had already asked for and have now substantially received submissions from virtually every major local authority, and from institutions such as the Royal Society of Chartered Surveyors, the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, the Institute of Engineers in Ireland, the auctioneers and all other interested bodies, including the business organisations and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. A lot of the preliminary work has been done. For Members of this House and the other House, this is a good opportunity to give non-office holders a substantial role in the formulation of legislation, the effect of which will be to transform the way in which land is held in urban areas for the next 20 years, which will affect 70 to 80 per cent of our population. If ever non-office holders in this House or in the Dáil sought substantial power in a legislative sense the Seanad has been offered it today in the formulation of this committee.
Lest anybody has any doubt, this Government and this Minister intend, as is our commitment in the common programme, to enact legislation in 1984 to deal with this problem. I hope that Senators and Deputies will avail fully of the opportunity provided by this committee to have a constructive input into the formulation of this legislation at a stage when such an input can have a meaningful effect. If they do not avail of that opportunity, they should not take it for granted that their non-taking up of the offer would prevent the legislation from being drafted or prevent this or the other House from passing what I hope will be a measure which will have the substantial support of all Members of the House. Therefore, I thank Senators very much for the constructive words offered from all sides of the House and to say in conclusion that when the committee is established my Department will have a role in servicing and assisting the work of that comittee. I give a personal undertaking to the Members of this House and of the Dáil that in so far as I can affect the measure, the committee will get every possible resource necessary to complete its task in a meaningful and constructive way within the time set by the terms of this motion.
