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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 16 Feb 1989

Vol. 387 No. 3

Derelict Sites Bill, 1989: Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Acting Chairman

Deputy Madeleine Taylor-Quinn was in possession.

I had made most of my points on the last day. In general I welcome the Bill. I am particularly glad of sections 12 and 13 which provide specific enforcement powers in relation to the general obligation established by sections 10 and 11, requiring the local authority to give special notification of specific remedial works to be undertaken by an individual. That is extremely important. In many cases local authorities did not have the clout to get that type of work done so that we had resultiong major dereliction. The additional power also in relation to private dwellings is a welcome improvement. Will the Minister outline exactly what he meant when he said that all remedial works would be exempted developments for planning purposes?

Section 13 gives the Minister power in relation to the proper enforcement of the Bill. This provision must be welcomed particularly in cases where the local authorities fail to enforce sections of the Bill or to comply with the provisions in relation to their functions. As I stated the last day, local authorities and statutory bodies are in many cases the worst offenders in not enforcing or complying with the legislation but are very active in insisting that other parties under their jurisdiction should comply with the legislation. I welcome this section.

Section 14 gives the Minister power to require a statutory body to dispose of their interest in any derelict site. This must be regarded as a welcome development. As everybody in this House knows local authorities own properties in very high amenity areas in towns and villages and particularly in the city of Dublin and by retaining those properties they increase the value of other properties and distort the current economic value of properties. They are interfering with the whole nature of supply and demand and this is affecting the market forces. I believe this section will be welcomed in particular by people in Dublin because property in Dublin is very valuable and depending on the area where a local authority have property it can affect the market value of the property of private individuals.

As I mentioned the last day, the problem with this legislation is that it does not apply to any other Government Department. The Minister did not outline very satisfactorily in his speech the reasons this legislation will not apply to other Government Departments. I believe it is very important that all Government Departments, State bodies and local authorities should be subject to this legislation. In his speech the Minister said this matter would be dealt with by consulting with his fellow Minister or, in the case of failure to sort it out with that Minister, he would bring it before the Cabinet. I do not think this would be possible or desirable from a practical point of view. Government Departments own so much property all over the country that if these issues became matters for discussion at the Cabinet table so much time would be spent on higgledy-piggledy discussions with regard to the different properties that the value of a Cabinet and what should be discussed at Cabinet level would be undermined. The simple way of dealing with this matter is to ensure that all Ministers and Government Departments are subject to the legislation. Perhaps the Minister will consider this point either on Committee Stage or Report Stage because there is an impracticality involved there.

Part III of the Bill deals with the derelict sites levy in relation to urban dereliction. This is an extremely welcome provision. It is an important development and one that must be appreciated. However, the Minister could use the urban renewal scheme to far greater effect with regard to dereliction. There are a number of applications in his Department at present seeking inclusion in the urban renewal scheme which to date have not been cleared. This scheme could be extended to centre city areas and the centres of large rural towns and the Minister should at this stage put a greater impetus into the urban renewal scheme within the Department of the Environment and include more towns in the scheme. I know that in my constituency Ennis has applied for inclusion in the urban renewal scheme but to date this application has not been cleared by the Department of the Environment. The result is that major dereliction is taking place in certain parts of the town and people are not prepared to invest money in the development of properties in that area partly because they believe the town will be included in the scheme and partly because they believe that due to general dereliction it would not be economically viable to develop their property when other properties in the region are not being developed. Great impetus should be given to the promotion of the urban renewal scheme and I hope the Minister will consider this proposal in conjunction with the Bill before the House because I believe one works hand in hand with the other. With an overall cohesive policy on urban development and renewal one could get rid of much of the dereliction which exists in the country. Not alone that, but the attractiveness of cities and towns would be enhanced by getting rid of dereliction. The attractiveness of cities and towns can be increased both from a tourism, investment and commercial point of view and character point of view. This is particularly desirable when one compares some of our cities with cities in Europe. Many of our cities and towns have more history than their counterparts in Europe but when the cities are compared ours leave much to be desired. There is great room for improvement and it is possible to do this successfully but it needs a co-ordinated direction from the Department of the Environment.

The Minister said that a developer will be able to tender a bond for five years of the levy instead of actually paying the levy and that the levy will be waived if the development is completed within five years. I would urge caution in this area. It is important that this legislation is not used entirely by major developers and large contractors. It is important that individuals would also be encouraged to develop their property and that the levy will not be used in a foolhardy way against private individuals. I note that provision is made for the waiver of the levy by local authorities in cases of hardship. This is an extremely important provision and must be highlighted. While major developments and the coming together of major development companies are desirable the entire character of an area can be lost if there is no local involvement in a development.

When I spoke on this matter previously, I referred to the reintroduction of the home improvements scheme. This scheme would be important in relation to rural areas where old traditional homesteads could be retained. I know the scheme has been done away with but it could be re-examined with a view to reintroducing it in order to retain some of the more traditional characteristics of houses in rural areas and towns. If people are forced under this legislation to get rid of derelict sites or to bring about improvements to their property, some encouragement should be given to them to bring back the old traditional type of shop fronts, old stone work and character that existed in our towns in the past. That would be a valuable move. I hope the Minister will seriously consider that aspect on Committee Stage.

Deputy McDowell and Deputy G. FitzGerald rose.

I am sorry, but I do not have the order of speakers here. I am consulting. I have been advised that in the light of the fact that we have had quite a number of Fine Gael speakers and have not had one from the Progressive Democrats Party to speak for some time, I should honour the Progressive Democrats.

I should, I suppose, have deferred to my senior constituent colleague in the matter——

Not in this matter.

——but I did not know how long the Deputy would be and I have another commitment that prevents me from remaining in the House for long.

This Bill is to a large extent a jar of smoke. It applies only to derelict sites. Derelict sites do not mean what the average person thinks the expression means. Derelict sites as defined in section 4 of this Bill have the following meaning:

In this section "derelict site" means any land (in this section referred to as "the land in question") which detracts, or is likely to detract, to a material degree from the amenity, character or appearance of land in the neighbourhood of the land in question because of—

(a) the existence on the land in question of structures which are in a ruinous, derelict or dangerous condition, or

(b) the neglected, unsightly or objectionable condition of the land or any structures on the land in question, or

(c) the presence, deposit or collection on the land in question of any litter, rubbish, debris or waste, except where the presence, deposit or collection of such litter, rubbish, debris or waste results from the exercise of a right conferred by statute or by common law.

A derelict site does not consist of a nice, well regulated, well looked after flat area in the middle of a town or city. This is the kernel of what is wrong with this Bill. A derelict site as defined under section 4 does not include a perfectly well run, tarmacadamed parking lot. Derelict sites do not include flat areas of undeveloped land in cities. In order to be a derelict site, it must either have a neglected, unsightly or objectionable condition or, secondly, have on it ruinuous buildings in a derelict or dangerous condition. If somebody buys up half of a street, levels it, makes it as clean as a billiard ball and keeps that site tidy, it is no derelict site as far as this Bill is concerned. The sad fact about the Bill is that it does not deal with what are in many cases very serious problems.

Car parking lots are proliferating in central Dublin which are not derelict sites within the meaning of the Bill. What is obnoxious about them is that you can see from them the innards of neighbouring houses and the remains of walls which are not on the land in question. What is derelict about these sites is that they are not developed. In any particular street they mean that there is no structure, that there are no houses, or shops to complement other shops and houses in the neighbourhood

If I knock down one side of Merrion Square and keep it in a perfect state, tarmacadamed and in use for car parking, that is not a derelict site. The big problem with this Bill is that it does not address itself to curing what in many cases are very serious obstacles to orderly redevelopment of a city.

This Bill is a tiny piece of gestural politics on the part of the Government and will not be successful. The previous derelict sites code did not succeed. I accept that the Minister is giving greater powers to and imposing more strict obligations on local authorities. It goes one stage further than the simple rights the local authorities had under the old legislation. I do not believe for one moment that this measure, by itself, will have a dramatic effect on derelict sites. The duties imposed on people not to let their lands go derelict will not have any effect. People will hold on to land in land banks or whatever and try to keep it tidy. When somebody tries to prosecute them and serves a notice on them, they will say that they will tarmacadam the area, put a fence around it, do whatever is wanted. Nobody under this Bill is obliged to build anything on the site and that is the fundamental problem with the Bill.

Notice served under section 7, with which it is an offence not to comply, cannot require somebody to build on, say, a site in an important urban thoroughfare, a building four storeys high to match the other buildings. Nothing of that kind can be done. It cannot redress the issue where somebody decides to knock down the three top storeys of a four storey building and have a one storey shop on the ground floor of a street like Capel Street or Camden Street in Dublin. This would make the street look horrible, like something out of a wartime film, but leaving it in that condition does not amount to having it derelict. That is a totally wrong feature of this Bill.

Another strange feature is the levy on derelict sites. I am fully in favour of taxation on land as a resource. I cannot imagine how, by removing the roof of a house or demolishing the structure, you can avoid local taxation, thus doing tremendous damage to the local community. I cannot see how there ever was any logic in that. Rates based on a theoretical letting value should always have been charged on a penal multiple in respect of dereliction. I do not think anybody would object to that procedure. The Minister here is providing that local authorities are obliged to register every derelict site in this area, to put a market value beside it on the register and the Minister can then authorise a charge to be levied on those sites called a derelict sites levy, but the amount of that can multiply tenfold at the discretion of the Minister. A 1 per cent site value tax could be quite serious if you own half of O'Connell Street; so would a 2 per cent site value tax. But if the Minister can, by regulation, multiply the levy payable by ten, to 10 per cent of the annual value of the site, that is expropriation. I am not against a penal rate of taxation in these cases — I want to make that clear — but on constitutional grounds I have grave doubts as to whether the courts will uphold the right of a Minister, at his choosing, to decide whether a tax can be levied at 1 per cent or 10 per cent of the value of property. Is it constitutional for this House to delegate to a Minister and to the Executive the right to determine whether a tax is multiplied tenfold on a particular piece of land? I would say that there is a doubt about that. I am not suggesting that it is a cast iron constitutional case, but somebody who is badly hurt by it will undoubtedly argue that if the Minister charges 10 per cent in one area and 1 per cent in another area this is an unlawful delegation to the Executive of a power to impose a tax on the land. It is not just a penalty, it is a levy. The wording of section 24 is not that of a penal statute imposing a penalty for failing to do something. It is in the form of a tax because it relates to the value of the land. There is a strong case to be made for the proposition that if it is a taxation measure, even with specific social purposes in mind, it is not right for this House to give to a Minister the right to multiply a tax at his discretion without any control by this House. Section 24(3) states:

The amount of the derelict sites levy shall be a proportion of the market value of the urban land which shall be prescribed for each urban area, from time to time, by the Minister, but it shall not exceed 10 per cent of the market value of the land.

Is it really possible to provide that the Minister for the Environment can say that in Dublin the derelict sites levy will be 10 per cent but in Castlebar it will be 0.1 per cent? I do not give this example caustically. Is it right that he should be enabled to vary the levy from year to year without reference to this House? It seems an extraordinary power to give a Minister. It is strange legislation for this House to contemplate. He might reduce or relax the levy depending on the representations made to him.

My main misgivings with the way in which this Bill seeks to tackle the problem are first that "dereliction" does not mean what the average person thinks it means. Dereliction can be avoided by somebody just tarmacadaming a piece of land in a priority area as far as urban renewal is concerned and leaving it clean and tidy. Secondly, the method of imposing a levy seems to be arbitrary and seems to delegate extraordinary powers to the Minister, allowing him to vary across the country at his own discretion the amount of the levy from place to place. He would be entitled to vary it every year upwards or downwards. There could be a very strong argument for the unconstitutionality of the delegation to the Minister and of the inequality which would flow from different rates being imposed in different parts of the country. Doubtless those two points could be addressed by amendments, but they are fundamental points of principle. The principle of dereliction is not what the layman would think it is. The principle on which the levy is to be imposed is left on a discretionary basis, which in my view makes it infirm. Those are two points which I notice particularly.

I should like to make some comments on the objects of the Bill and its capacity to achieve them. In order to address dereliction as a social evil in urban areas one has to take a long hard look at its causes, which are complex. The Institute of Chartered Surveyors produced a very good paper a number of years ago on the causes of dereliction. In places like Dublin the causes are quite complicated. There are social pressures arising from the sheer growth of the city which lead inevitably to some process of change, but change does not automatically entail dereliction, except on a purely temporary basis from time to time.

The Rent Restrictions Act in many cases encouraged landlords, especially in centre city areas, to keep the ground floor portions of their premises in good repair but to allow the residential quarters upstairs to fall into disrepair. Then there is the whole question of urban blight. The most important point is the absurd pretence that we should have a code of local government planning and development law which tries to regulate the manner in which cities and rural areas are developed and planned on a uniform basis.

The 1963 Local Government (Planning and Development) Act represents a watershed in planning control and a major codification of pre-existing controls on development, but it is an Act which could not achieve what it set out to do. The process is a fundamentally negative process of planning control. Certain things are prohibited and certain things are exempt. In a rural area the process of prohibition coupled with permission is probably sufficient to ensure orderly development. Philosophically it is inapplicable to towns.

If we look to any areas of Dublin which are now admired, be they the areas built by the Gardiner or Pembroke estates or some of the other large estates or the areas planned and laid out by the Wide Street Commissioners, the method by which those areas were built in general terms consisted of the person who had the ownership of the land setting out a scheme of development and ensuring by means of building leases and the like that the model in his mind of how the street should finally emerge would materialise. Places like Talbot Street, which are not architectural marvels at this stage, were laid out by the Wide Street Commissioners. They took into ownership the land in question and granted building leases on strict conditions. The Pembroke estate did much of the same work on a private enterprise basis in the southeastern area of the city. Gardiner and others did the same kind of work in the north city centre. The modus operandi was to grant building leases which had to conform with an overall uniform plan for the development of the area.

None of those areas would have merged if it had been left to speculative free enterprise to develop those areas as they saw fit in accordance with a patchwork pattern of land ownership. Orderly development in an urban area requires the power to acquire land compulsorily, to extinguish intermediate interests in land and the power to direct, at least in general terms, the nature of the development that occurs on the land.

Most Deputies will be aware of the controversy that surrounded, for instance, the building of the highway from Clanbrassil Street to Christ Church Cathedral in recent times. It runs along one edge of the constituency represented by Deputy Garret FitzGerald and me. That enterprise caused in its execution about 35 years of urban blight in terms of the non-repair, disrepair and dereliction which the road plan entailed by reason of the manner in which it was carried out. Dublin Corporation are a huge bureaucracy but, if you look at the worst features of Dublin, on about eight occasions out of ten it is the direct responsibility of Dublin Corporation that such dereliction exists.

This Bill, which is supposed to give local authorities further powers in relation to dereliction, ignores the fundamental fact that local authorities probably by their actions cause the vast majority of dereliction by operating the Planning Act and by carrying out their functions in relation to road widening. To take the example of that road, whatever your views about how wide it should be, whether it should be a dual carriageway or a narrower road and whatever your views about whether the buildings should have been at a particular distance from one another — and I had strong views in regard to this — I object most of all to the fact that there is a section of Dublin Corporation which can run a road along that line but there is no section of Dublin Corporation which has the power and the duty to rebuild the streetscape and, so to speak, heal the scar. Local authorities simply do not have the function, as the Wide Street Commissioners had, of making sure, not simply that a roadway was built, but that a street and a living community were restored to the area. Therefore, in so many cases in Dublin — the same applies although happily to a lesser extent in some of our other cities — there are examples of local authority created dereliction and devastation in the city centre with no corresponding duty on the authority to do anything about repairing the social, environmental and historical damage that has been done to a city as a living organism.

Dublin Corporation are a vast bureaucracy whose headquarters are happily in a building which sums them up in many respects because it is a building which has turned its face on urban renewal and against any concept of city existence and a sense of importance of the city as an historical place where people exist. Those two monumental piles down on Wood Quay are a great monument to the thinking of the corporation and however unpleasant they are to look at from the outside it is a just sentence on many of the people in Dublin Corporation that they must work in them because many of those people have created a sense of ugliness everywhere which those buildings symbolise for many Dublin citizens.

Dublin Corporation are not the body who can bring about urban renewal in Dublin and all their efforts have shown us just how unsuited they are to that end. If anyone has any doubts about whether one roadway or another will recover and become part of the urban landscape, let them go a few hundred yards from here to Cuffe Street to see the sheer devastation that Dublin Corporation not only allowed but created. It is the worst jumble of corporation created dereliction on a corner site, gable ends of sad buildings sticking out on to the street and totally inappropriate corporation tower blocks of flats sited in positions which are totally unsuitable. Private developers have been allowed to build office blocks at angles to one another without any relation to the streetscape — I am thinking in particular of the Telecom office block. Another large building, Greenside House, was flung up without any regard to the facade. These things happened on a street which was widened by Dublin Corporation, turned into a dual carriageway and supposed to be of proportions which I am sure were explained to people at the time as being proportions which were likely to give rise to a beautiful street. However, they did not because nobody was given the function of rebuilding that street. As long as any urban local authority have to labour under the local government planning and development code in its present form, they are not only incapable of conserving their cities, they are likely to do more and more damage to them the more activities they carry out. They simply do not have the powers to do what is necessary to conserve beautiful streets.

O'Connell Street was devastated in the 1916-1922 period but it was rebuilt according to a plan. There was an architect who had views about the materials to be used and nobody was allowed — as they are now — to erect a one storey building on O'Connell Street and put amusement machines into it. That is the order of the day in most of the north inner city in Dublin, you can remove the top storey of any premises on the basis that it is old and infirm and carry on a trade on the ground floor, reducing the character of the street to that of a wild west town. There is no control, nobody can force you to come to heel. That is dereliction; and it is why this Bill is grossly inadequate.

Some Deputies have recently been approached by people involved in the south eastern portion of the city around the Grand Canal basin. There is a project in being to make use of the basin as a recreational and amenity facility to generate employment in an unemployment black spot. They want to bring about renewal based on a new sense of pride an the huge opportunity that the Grand Canal structure and basins left over from the operation of the Grand Canal Company offer in terms of potential amenity facilities. One of the sad things about that is that the Mount Street Club was established as an unemployment exchange in the days when social welfare was not as sophisticated as it is now and it was thought to be a good thing that people who had the resources, time and capacity to organise work for others, should do so on a voluntary basis. They put people who were willing to work in touch with people who were willing to offer them work in order to reduce the scourge of unemployment in the inner city. The Mount Street Club has now teamed up with local community organisations to try to develop the Grand Canal complex in terms of the canal itself and the harbours and basins in the south inner city as an employment and recreational facility.

As a group of volunteers they deserve huge credit for what they have done because they are trying to take on dereliction on a vast scale, on a voluntary basis. They face, curiously enough, not in general terms the hostility of their community — they have the full backing of the community and their local representatives — but that of Bord Gáis which is the successor to the Gas Company and various other semi-State agencies who occupy or have control over most of the land which is near where they want to carry out their scheme. Presumably Bord Gáis, CIE and Bord Telecom who own some of these lands and the Office of Public Works who own the canal, its banks and basins, have their own different economic and constitutional reasons for holding on to land or disposing of it in one form or another. Some of them are under pressure to make commercial gain by disposing of the land.

I am sure Deputy FitzGerald would agree that there is no single co-ordinating body which possibly could take advantage of this opportunity to cure dereliction in that area of Dublin. If one stands near Mount Street and looks towards Boland's Mills and towards the Liffey, one would see that most of the land is derelict; yet there appears to be no visible impetus for its redevelopment. The reason is that Dublin Corporation do not have the resources, the will or the inclination to bring about a change in the way that part of the city looks.

An Bord Gáis have no motivation to do anything with it either. CIE have different plans for it to anybody else. The sad fact is that the opportunity to carry out redevelopment on a large scale, which could form the nucleus of a complete wave of urban renewal in that area, cannot be taken. Although we have created a proliferation of semi-State bodies we have done very little in terms of establishing mechanisms to bring about urban renewal and carry on the business of conservation in urban areas.

The Minister should bring before this Dáil a Bill which would enable urban development corporations to be established by order with particular purposes in mind. These corporations should have the power — they need not be overblown bodies, they could be simple bodies — to draw up a plan, to compulsorily acquire interests in land in their areas and to seek tenders for widespread redevelopment within the area for which they have special responsibility. They should also have power to acquire derelict land on a street which runs through their area — most of which is in an unobjectionable state — or to require people to back up the extra floors above a premises so as to recreate the streetscape or to carry out infill developments which are necessary to prevent dereliction. To stop the rot powers will be required to force people to use their land in a way that is consistent with the character of the area.

One of the big obstacles to any form of interference with property rights is the much vaunted constitutional protection for private property rights. In a book by K. C. Wheare entitled Modern Constitutions the constitutions of European countries are compared. This is a classic text in comparative constitutional law. The author points out that the Irish provisions in relation to private property are virtually indistinguishable from those set out in the Yugoslav Constitution and that we do not have, at least as far as the written word of the Constitution is concerned, any Draconian pro-private property code which prevents the social dimension of property from being controlled and regulated in the public interest. One of the chief obstacles facing the Minister — I am afraid he is part of the problem by virtue of his recent behaviour in this House — in trying to make progress in relation to private property, its rights and obligations, lies in the Attorney General's Office who seem to give the most conservative advice to successive Governments. Nobody seems to be willing to take any real risks of introducing legislation to see how far the courts will go in turning the tide against ultra-conservative views in respect of property rights.

The other chief problem arises from the legal advice available in the Department of the Environment. I will not go any further than this at this stage as I intend to comment on it at a later stage in relation to the Bill presented by the Minister to amend the local government planning and development code. I was shocked by the way the Minister failed to tackle the issue of planning compensation and sought to entrench compensation rights ad infinitium for the present owners of property. I cannot believe that if there were 30 senior counsel, more than one of them would advise his Department that the particular provisions in those Bills were required by the Constitution. If the Supreme Court suggests as it did recently, that the present compensation code is unconstitutional because it is far too generous to property owners, then surely it would be remisss of the House not to listen to the clear message coming from the Four Courts, and to act upon it by taking a bit of courage in our hands to change our views on property rights.

The time has come, especially in relation to urban planning law, to take seriously the suggestion that property does have obligations in an urban context — I think it was Drummond who said that property has its obligations and its duties as well as its rights — and that a person cannot claim the right to leave land unused, if he leaves land unused or fallow he cannot as of right demand to be accorded immunity from extra taxation or from having the land taken from him to be put to use. I do not believe anyone has the right to allow land become derelict, to leave it unoccupied or unused or to leave buildings boarded up, blocked up or in a state which would detract from the environment. The municipality has a right to demand that its streets work, that there are living streets and that the available space, which is a scarce resource — although one would not think so looking around Dublin where there are at least 100 acres of derelict land — be used to give the city life.

Every shopkeepr in a street has a right to demand that the remainder of his street is not walled up. I do not want to be too hard on the fellows in Trinity College, but you cannot do what they did in Pearse Street, and block up all the ground floor shops on the one side of the street and say it is a matter of complete indifference as far as the city and the ordinary citizen is concerned. A property owner does not have rights to use land as he will, to close it or to change it as he likes. I think the Supreme Court would take the view that there are obligations on property owners in urban areas to use and maintain property in good repair, and to permit it to be integrated into urban life rather than allow it to become derelict and effectively a source of urban rot.

If the Supreme Court were to take that view, it would be incumbent on this House to at least pass legislation which would go some way towards altering the balance of property rights against the individual owner who seeks to abuse his rights and in favour of the community who have to put up with the consequences of dereliction. In that process, firstly, as long as you have a negative planning code like the 1963 planning code you will never make progress in urban renewal. The planning permission system, the draft plans, the development plans will never make one beautiful street. They create Cuffe Street. The Pembroke Estate created Merrion Square. That is the difference. As long as there is not some element of positive planning you will always have ugliness, dereliction, confusion and blight. Those are the wages of the sin this House committed when in 1963 it decided urban planning should be governed by a negative planning code such as we have. We need something more.

In Britain they have seen this is the case. There are urban renewal corporations working on docksides in London rebuilding the core of the inner city, but in Ireland we do not accept that. In a sense we are afraid of the local authorities. We are afraid to be accused of being undemocratic, and people are worried that local authorities might take offence if their powers were restricted even to the small extent the Metropolitan Streets Commission did that in Dublin. People were afraid that was in some sense treading on their corns and being undemocratic. There is no likelihood of real urban renewal as long as we rely on the present statutory framework. I despair of measures such as this which are just window dressing when it comes to the size of the problem. If, as I think is the case, a huge car park is not even a derelict site for this purpose, what hope has this Bill, if it becomes law in its present form, of remedying the situation? We need different solutions. We need positive powers to acquire land, to extinguish intermediate interest in land, to simplify title to land; we need all those things if we are to make any progress in urban renewal. None of those solutions is to be found here.

Instead we have a defective definition of derelection which does not really deal with the problem. We have a defective system of control and a defective and probably unconstitutional levy to be imposed at the arbitrary discretion of the Minister at different rates in different parts of the country. That is a recipe for another three to four years of failure to confront the real problems of urban decay. I ask every Member of this House to look carefully at the document prepared by the Institute of Chartered Surveyors about urban decay and its causes. There is no point in fooling ourselves that this kind of measure is an adequate remedy when we have not even analysed the causes of decay and addressed our minds to remedying those causes.

This is a rather miserable legislative response to a huge problem. It will not have the effect contended by the Minister. The last Derelict Sites Act was a failure and so was the one before it and, with the greatest respect, this one is going to be a failure. The sooner this House faces up comprehensively to urban decay and realises that the planning laws and these kinds of small remedies are not sufficient, the better.

Until this House faces up to a positive duty to conserve we will achieve nothing in terms of overall urban conservation. It is amazing that I can buy a house which is supposed to be conserved in a development plan, allow the slates fall off the roof, sometimes take a saw to the joists and cause the decay myself, board it up and allow dry rot, wet rot, damp and so on to infest that house. I can do what happened in Clare Street so near to us here: remove the top few storeys of a building on the pretext that my own carelessness in allowing them collapse and decay should entitle me to destroy something the preservation of which was an object of the development plan. Unless we decide we are going to put in place positive conservation powers there will be no chance of saving what is left of our architectural heritage.

The Progressive Democrats brought in a Bill which contained the innovation of a conservation receiver, somebody entitled to intervene with the backing of a court where a building the preservation of which was the object of a development plan was endangered, someone entitled to get powers to go in and do whatever was necessary to conserve that building, to bill the owners or the person who failed to conserve with the cost of so doing and to ensure that the cost of so doing remained a charge on that property so that merely by a multiple chain of ownership the obligation could not be avoided. That has not been done and I do not believe it is the Minister's planning and our Bill was voted down by the Minister.

I do not believe there is any adequate remedy to save Georgian Dublin from people determined to knock it down if they want to do so. We are relying only on goodwill now and that is not good enough. In this House we have an obligation to go one stage further and create a duty, where conservation is deemed necessary by the planning authority in their plan, by An Taisce or some State conservation body, to conserve that property and keep it in good repair. Until we do things like that, until we adopt radical proposals in relation to the environment, this kind of piecemeal legislation will serve perhaps as a palliative. Perhaps it will allow this Minister at his forthcoming Ard Fheis to try to create the illusion he is doing something to stop urban decay when he is doing no such thing. However, I guarantee there will be as many derelict sites in five years' time as there are now and the difficulties the Minister is running into on a legal front with his levy and his definition of dereliction will have all efforts heavily bogged down in the courts within months of this Bill coming into effect. This Bill, although a gesture in the right direction, is doomed to failure. I know Deputy Keating, on behalf of my party, welcomed it in principle. I welcome its principle too, but it is so abject a measure and so inadequate in the face of what is needed that really one can only despair of the evil it purports to confront ever being remedied as long as Bills like this are tossed in this state before the House.

If I had read the Minister's speech but not the Bill I might have welcomed this measure. I do not want to reject it; something is better than nothing, but having read the Bill my welcome will be very muted, in part for some of the reasons mentioned by the previous speaker, in part for other reasons. The Bill has to be seen against the background of the general question of property rights. In this country there has been a very strong movement over the period of independence towards the protection, indeed over protection, of property rights. In the first Constitution as drafted there were Articles at the very outset which set out certain principles with regard to property rights and duties. In a very complex process at the end of May 1922, the full nature of which remains obscure to me at least, when other issues between the Irish and British Governments came to be discussed at that time, these Articles were dropped. The fact that they were contemplated and included in the first draft and even in the draft that was discussed with the British Government at that time suggests they represented something of the consensus of the founders of the State, but I do not think at that stage that this part of the Constitution could have evoked any disagreement between the two sides who at that time were in conflict, or about to be in conflict. When they were dropped the constitutional provisions came in which were then re-enacted and possibly — I do not wish to be dogmatic on this point — strengthened in the 1937 Constitution. The traditional interpretations over the years were of such a character as to give rise to a belief, certainly among the legal advisers to the Government, not merely the Attorney General's office but in the Department of Local Government, later the Department of the Environment, that the entrenchment of property rights was such that anything that did not pay the utmost respect to them, that seemed to in any way challenge the existence of rights and the absence of duties, would be shot down by the Supreme Court.

I have always thought, since I first became interested in politics, that the views of the Supreme Court were over-interpreted by the legal advisers. Of course, it is the duty of the legal advisers to a Government, whether in a Department or the Attorney General's Office, to advise if a proposed course of action might be unconstitutional. If there is a strong presumption of unconstitutionality it could be regarded as improper for a Government to attempt to legislate in that way. However, I am not sure on how far that should be pushed. I have always thought that there was a case for a certain measure of imprudence in this area designed to test the Supreme Court to the limit and that if at a certain point a decision was obtained from the Supreme Court so much opposed to the community's interests in regard to property as to give rise to genuine political issues than the Government who had brought things to that point could legitimately, perhaps, not necessarily successfully, take the matter to the people. I regret that no Government have ever been willing to pursue that policy without, I think, any constitutional impropriety, by just pushing it to the limit of what the existing advice would seem to tolerate and seeing how far things could be taken.

It is now clear, in the light of recent Supreme Court obiter dicta that either the Supreme Court's views have indeed been over-interpreted by the legal advisers to the Government or that the Supreme Court's position has, as happens, and very properly, over a period of time in recognition of changes in the balance of public opinion, been modified in a direction less protective of private interests and showing more concern for the public interest. It is against the background of an evolution initially away from the public interest and towards the protection of private interests but latterly it would appear from the Supreme Court decisions or obiter dicta back towards the public interest, that we should see this legislation. We should measure it, and its adequacy for the purposes for which it is intended, by reference to this shift in opinion. Does it go as far in the direction of the public interest as could prudently be done in the light of what has been said by the Supreme Court in recent times? I would think not and in that respect I would agree with Deputy McDowell. Not being a practising lawyer I would express my opinion more strongly than he would being properly cautious in matters of constitutional law in view of the fact that he might get caught up in some case by overstating the position. I do not have those fears and, perhaps, I can be a little less prudent. Undoubtedly, more could be done in this Bill than is done in this respect. I say that by way of general comment before dealing with the details of the Bill.

Looking at the Bill from another aspect in terms of a climate of political opinion I think it is a response, an inadequate one but a response nevertheless, to the manner in which public opinion has over the last two decades reacted to — to put at its politest — the uncaring attitude of the Government in office at that time towards the preservation and conservation of the city of Dublin but also of parts of other cities. It is unlikely that today any Minister would think that he could without serious damage to his own position, and to that of his party, make the kind of statements that former Deputy Boland made when he as Minister denigrated the architectural and historic value of large parts of the city of Dublin on the grounds that they were built by a foreign regime. In fact, the logic of what he said would require the entire city to be demolished but he limited himself to suggesting that buildings of particular distinction should be demolished. He was quite happy that undistinguished buildings should remain for some reason. His remarks about belted Earls in Georgian Dublin still echo in our ears but I do not think any Minister today could speak in those iconoclastic terms and terms denigratory of an extraordinary part of our architectural heritage and get away with it.

The Bill reflects a shift in opinion of a modest kind towards trying to do something in a small way to protect us from the depredations of time, of neglect, of our corporation in Dublin, depredations going far beyond anything required by the ordinary exercise of business acumen to carry out entrepreneurial activities.

For the record, I should like to point out to the Deputy that we have had two Deputy Bolands who were former Ministers for Local Government.

Dr. G. Fitzgerald

I am thinking of Deputy Kevin Boland. Was Deputy Boland's father a Minister for Local Government?

Deputy John Boland was.

Dr. G. Fitzgerald

I was referring to a Fianna Fáil Minister and while I did not want to be too pointed about that I thought that was clear from my remarks. I certainly was not referring to Deputy Kevin Boland's father for whom I have great respect. I was referring to former Deputy Kevin Boland. Examples of the consequences of dereliction are all round us. Deputy McDowell, and other Members, have rightly pointed to the appalling damage inflicted on our city by the roads policies of the officials of Dublin Corporation who have brought along in their train very often, I am afraid, although with reluctance in many cases, the members of the corporation. So much of the city has been destroyed for the purpose of building roads. A lot of dereliction around the place as a result of those happenings over decades has been an extraordinary consequence of the inactions of civic authorities. Even today we have places such as Clare Street. In fact, wherever we go we can see derelict sites, in the ordinary meaning of the word, and buildings which are in a state of neglect on sites which, apparently under this Bill, are to be declared derelict sites rather, I fear, against the ordinary meaning of those words. I have some qualms as to the possible legal contests that might arise from the manner in which the Bill seeks to deal with the question of dwellings even though what it seeks to do in respect of them is very limited indeed.

I am wondering what exactly the Minister thinks the Bill will do in this respect. In respect of Clare Street will it put a roof on the house? In respect of the houses in Belgrave Square that an entrepreneur has been seeking to turn into a hotel, the panes of glass are broken in the windows, the houses are unpainted and are already becoming an eyesore vis-à-vis the neighbouring buildings. Will the Bill require him to restore the panes of glass or to paint up the building? That is far from clear. The Minister has nodded and I am glad he has done so but I wonder whether somebody contesting what is required might not at the margin end up with a court decision somewhat different from what I and the Minister would hope would be the decision. There is a certain lack of clarity.

The fact is that dwellings are included in the Bill only by implication. It is a curious manner of legislation and one can understand why because the Bill is the Derelict Sites Bill which repeals a previous Derelict Sites Act. It is seeking to use the derelict site concept to go beyond that and do a little more than one would have thought a derelict sites Bill might do. It is good that it should attempt to do that but I am afraid that by only going a little distance along the road, and being less than specific, it is doubtful whether it will achieve what perhaps are the intentions of its authors.

The nearest thing to a reference to a dwelling in the Bill is "a structure". In section 4 there is a reference to the amenity, character or appearance of land in the neighbourhood of the land in question being detracted from because of the existence on the land in question of structures which are in a ruinous, derelict or dangeorus condition. I think that in the original Act it was "walls" but we have gone beyond walls to "structures". There is an extraordinary hesitation about saying "buildings" or "dwellings". It is not clear exactly what has happened the structures under the provisions of this Bill. The Minister nodded when I asked if it would involve repainting them and amending panes of glass. He did not nod when I asked if the damage to, for example, Clare Street, would be restored. What is specified in section 12 (2) (a) is as follows:

A notice under this section shall—

(a) specify the measures which the local authority or the Minister, as the case may be, consider to be necessary in order to prevent the land from becoming or continuing to be a derelict site,

That is all; there is nothing else that I can find although it may be that I am missing some point.

The Minister says clear the whole site.

How is that to be interpreted? If the Minister nods when I asked if the houses could be repainted and the panes of glass restored does it not seem doubtful, to say the least, that that is how that is to be interpreted? Would a court, in the ordinary meaning of the words — and I suppose the ordinary meaning of the words are what the courts are about unless the definition is very specifically other than that, and we are talking now about what is defined in section 4 — hold that mending panes of glass and painting a building is an appropriate way of preventing land from becoming or continuing to be a derelict site? Is it a derelict site, in the ordinary meaning of the words, if that is what is wrong with it? Would not allowing the panes of glass to be replaced and not painting the building allow it become a derelict site?

I will revert to section 4 (a) which reads:

the existence on the land in structures which are in a ruinous, derelict or dangerous condition,....

I wondered a bit about the word "ruinous". Does that mean, for example, that Saint Kevin's Church in Camden Street will be knocked down because it is a ruin? There is such a thing as discretion on the part of Dublin Corporation. Perhaps that is one building they would not knock down; they have not so far; they appear to have missed it. The words used are "in a ruinous, derelict or dangerous condition". For example, panes of glass missing is not in itself dangerous; if they are loose it is dangerous; if they are missing it is not. I do not think one could contend that panes of glass being missing renders a house ruinous but, is it derelict, or a derelict structure? In any event section 12 (2) (a) specifies what is to be done. The point is that we are talking about structures that are derelict. The definition in section 4 refers to structures becoming ruinous, derelict or in a dangerous condition. But what is done to put them right is to prevent the land from becoming derelict, not the structures. Is that not a curious way of tackling the problem? If, in section 4, the definition of "derelict site" relates to structures and it does specifically because it says:

(a) the existence on the land in question of structures which are in a ruinous, derelict or dangerous condition,...

How would a court interpret a requirement that the land, not the structures, be prevented from becoming or continuing to be a derelict site?

Knock down the rest of it.

The logical thing to do is knock down the building, put in a car park, tarmacadam it and then it ceases to be a derelict site. But would a court, in the ordinary meaning of the words, hold that a Bill in which, though the definitions section refers to structures but the section dealing with the remedy for dereliction refers only to land, hold that land means structures? It cannot because it is "the existence on the land in question of structures", which is the wording contained in section 4 (a). Therefore land cannot mean structures because the definition of "derelict site" in section 4 clearly distinguishes land from structures and says they are different, that the structures are something on the land, that the remedy is to prevent the land from becoming or continuing to be a derelict site.

The Minister might re-examine the drafting here. I understand how the drafting could have arisen although I am not sure the reason for things being drafted are always obscure until they are explained to one by the experts. Even then they often remain obscure to us mere mortal Deputies or Ministers. I think I understand a possible reason for the wording, that the Bill in its provenance is a Bill on derelict land. The attempt — a worthy one which I fully support — to import into it the concept of conserving structures is one which is attempting to do something rather difficult. It may be that it has not been done as well and fully as it ought. I would ask the Minister particularly to look at that point and indeed at the whole question Deputy McDowell raised as well about the adequacy of this as a method of dealing with the problem of derelict structures as distinct from derelict land. The issue is a fairly important one because we all hope — I suspect this is what the Minister hopes, too — that its provisions will be effective in preventing the kind of dereliction that we might otherwise be faced with.

Some of the dereliction relates to sites. There are unsightly sites. There are sites on which there are bushes and grass that has not been mown. In some instances perhaps a site could be thought to be more attractive with its attendant flora and fauna — rats, too, of course — than it would be if it were tarmacademed. Take the example of the site at Charlemont Street where another road is to be built in due course. Indeed I wish they would get on with it because that road does seem worthwhile; I would support that all right. I presume Dublin Corporation own that site but if the Minister directed that something be done about it to prevent it becoming derelict, what would be done? Would the shrubs and trees that have grown amidst the wilderness there be torn down, the place flattened and tarmacadamed? Or would the shrubs and trees be torn down, grass sown on it and maintained? What exactly is the process for dealing with this? It is fairly vague. The Bill does relate to derelict sites and the measures to be taken are those to prevent the land from becoming or continuing to be a derelict site. There are unsolved questions here. Certainly the Bill if viewed as a means of dealing with — as clearly the Minister, from his nod, hoped it would do — the question of painting, or restoring windows in dwellings waiting to have their usage changed, will mean that the Ministers hopes might not be fulfilled unless some modification is made to the relevant sections.

If we are to tackle the question of buildings being derelict it may be necessary to approach the matter somewhat differently. The Bill does not require in any specific way, or in any way that one can identify, anybody to restore a building. The Minister may think and hope, as I do, that the windows will be mended, the roof put on although he did not say that; the Minister agrees with painting and having panes of glass restored. I would hope it means putting roofs on again but there is nothing in the Bill to say so. A court could very easily hold that the absence of anything specific in the Bill does raise a serious question as to whether that is the intention. If in fact Dublin Corporation required, for example, in the case of Belgrave Square or Clare Street, that action be taken to have the buildings restored and that were contested as not being, in any ordinary meaning of the words, a measure to prevent the land becoming or continuing to be a derelict site, there is a fair chance the Minister would win the action and the Bill would turn out to be useless for that purpose. Possibly it would be useful for dealing with actual sites that are semi-cleared, with rubbish on them or something of that kind, but not for dealing with the problem with which the Minister clearly intends it to deal.

I do not think a court would hold that unless the Bill contains some such provision. It would need to make provision — under section 12 (2) (a) — that could require not merely the land from becoming or continuing to be a derelict site but the structure to be restored. Those words have to go in if this Bill is to have any real chance of doing what the Minister clearly wishes it to do, those words or words like them. It seems to me they must be inserted in section 12 (2) (a).

Would such a requirement stand up? I think and hope it would. It may be that if there are any constitutional doubts about it one would have to make some provision, that if the requirement were to be grossly unreasonable in some way the court might have some say in the matter, or perhaps some remedy of an owner asking the court to declare that the requirement is unreasonable. I hope that is not necessary. I certainly think that a requirement to restore structures in fairly specific terms is necessary, with whatever qualifications may have to accompany that. If that is not inserted the Minister will not achieve his intentions. I would urge him to look at that again. I hope he will receive appropriate advice that some action of that kind can be undertaken and that it would be useful to do so.

In section 9 there is a requirement that a register should be established within one year after the commencement of the Act. I would like the Minister to give some indication when the Act will commence. This House has an unhappy experience with all Governments — when I was in Government the problem also arose from time to time — of leaving it to the Minister to decide when an Act commences. The House thinks things are going to happen when it passes the Act but a long time elapses before it is brought into effect. There are good reasons for that from time to time. If there was not some good reason the Minister would not put in the requirement and the Act would take effect when it is passed. Could the Minister tell us what leads him to think that a commencement date is required and that the Act should not come into effect immediately it is passed? In so far as he has some reason — and I am sure he has — could he indicate what interval he expects to occur before the Act will come into effect?

I would suspect that some local authorities, if not all, would say to the Minister: "With our limited resources and all the cutbacks we could not possibly produce a register within one year. Do not commence the Act for the time being because we will never get the job done. Give us time to get things in order." With the National Archives Bill a period of two years was allowed for the papers to be handed over. Problems sometimes arise in Government Departments but I intend to put down questions shortly to find out what progress has been made with that Act. It has come into effect but there is a requirement to have the papers lodged in about 18 months time and I would be interested to know what progress has been made in that regard. I would not be a bit surprised if during the course of this year the Taoiseach's Department will say they will not have all the papers ready and that they need more time. That sometimes happens and in this instance there is a strong likelihood of it happening. We have been told that Dublin Corporation will register 600 derelict sites. Perhaps they are far enough advanced to have them registered in time but are all the other local authorities in the same position or will they seek a period before the Act commences? In any event could the Minister tell us when the Act is to commence?

The second question I want to ask — I do not see any answer to it in the Bill — is suppose it happens that a local authority compile a register that the Minister thinks is inadequate, that when the register is produced and inspected by members of the public the point is made that it does not include many derelict sites and that the job has not been done properly, what is the remedy? I do not see one in the Bill but that does not mean there is not one. Any Deputy's reading of Bills can be often inadequate. Perhaps there is a provision whereby the Minister can require that the register be recompiled if it is not adequate but I do not see it here. Maybe the Minister could explain, if there is such a provision, where it is. If not he should consider taking some powers in the matter. I am always reluctant to ask Ministers to take powers but I think this is the kind of power that might be useful in this case.

In regard to the question of ownership, I have read through the provisions in the different sections of the Bill which relate to giving notice to require action to be taken to end dereliction. Notice, as provided for under section 7, has to be given under section 12. The action to be taken must be specified. The owner has to be told what measure is to be taken within a month and he can object within 14 days.

Under section 16 the local authority may compulsorily acquire a derelict site and section 17 allows for objections to be made. Section 18 provides for the making of a vesting order. Compensation is dealt with under section 20. We have been told that in the city of Dublin the local authority are faced with 600 derelict sites. Many of these are controlled by the corporation but there are a large number which are not under their control. In these cases the corporation have to make reasonable inquiries to seek out the owners but in some cases they may not find them. From problems which I have experienced from time to time in my constituency it is clear that the ownership of land is often unknown in Dublin, and perhaps in rural areas also.

In cases where the owner cannot be found what happens? The corporation have the power to go in and do the work. I suspect that in many cases the owner will not be found and the local authority then have the right to take the necessary steps. If the Minister is right in regard to repairs to buildings, although he did not mention roofs, windows, painting and so on, the cost of carrying out the work to put right dereliction, not merely to clean out a place, put down tarmacadam and make a car park out of it, could be quite considerable for local authorities if the number of sites the ownership of which cannot be established is considerable. Local authorities may be loath to undertake extensive works at considerable expense when they are not very well endowed at present for reasons we all know.

If I were involved in a local authority and was required to clean up all the sites the owners of which nobody knew I would be inclined to sell them and get the money back. There is a provision in the Bill for compulsory acquisition but that is a complicated procedure. I do not know how much the legislation has been improved or streamlined in this area but I hope it has been improved. I do not know enough about compulsory acquisition law to know at a glance whether that is the case. That is the procedure that has to be gone through and then vesting takes place. We are talking about cases where the owner of the site is unknown. One would think the corporation could acquire the property, do the work, sell it and get the money for it, but that is not so. If within one year the owner comes along and says he owns that site the local authority have to compensate him. The man who would not admit to owning the site when it was derelict can look for compensation from the local authority who took over the site and paid for putting it right. When the local authority start this procedure they do not know what is going to happen.

We all know that many problems in the conservation area arise because local authorities have a problem with regard to compensation. If they try to stop something happening under all kinds of circumstances they may have to pay compensation. We all know that many of them have had to agree to things they did not want done at all because they had not the money to pay compensation and they could not stop these things being done. This is the biggest single problem that arises in regard to compensation in urban areas.

In this instance where we want these sites cleaned up we are telling the local authorities that they have to clean them up if they cannot find the owners. If they try to acquire the sites so that something useful can be done with them and they can get some money back on them, they may find themselves having to pay compensation, but they will not know until they acquire them. Twelve months afterwards the Sword of Damocles may hang over them and they may end up having to fork out a substantial sum. Will local authorities in those circumstances acquire sites in respect of which ownership is unknown, when they do not know whether they will have to pay? They have to pay very large compensation; somebody might come along and say this is a most valuable site intended for the development of some office block and demand so much money for it. So far as I can see from the Bill they will not know that until up to a year afterwards.

The Bill should be looked at again in this respect. Given that local authorities will be required to deal with derelict sites, I suggest that where the ownership cannot be established after reasonable inquiries and they are going to incur costs which they cannot get refunded because the owner will not admit to being the owner, they should be allowed to acquire compulsorily on a basis that when vesting takes place in a site the ownership of which cannot be established by reasonable inquiries it vests in them without compensation at that point. I do not think that an owner of a site who is not willing to own up to owning it when it is derelict and is required to be put right should have the right to come along afterwards and demand compensation when the site has been acquired, having trapped the local authority into that. That is a very undesirable provision in the Bill and I would like the Minister to look at it.

I hope I will not be told that what I suggest would be unconstitutional. I cannot see that anybody has the right to refuse to acknowledge ownership of something where there is a penalty and claim ownership when there is a benefit. Whatever the rights of property, they cannot go that far in any reasonable society. Even if our society is a bit unreasonable, they cannot be that unreasonable.

I hope, therefore, that there can be a linkage established and that in fact the act of entering upon a property, the ownership of which has not been established after reasonable inquiry, with a view to dealing with dereliction which the owner is not willing to deal with, should be deemed to be an act of acquisition so that by virtue of doing the work a right to the property accrues to the local authority. There are various precedents in law for that where, when somebody has to act because of a failure on the part of another person, certain rights are acquired. I do not see how there could be any constitutional objection to acquiring a right in such circumstances. I would hope that that will be looked at and a linkage established so that the local authorities, for once in their lives, will be able to go ahead without having to worry that they will have to pay out a vast sum if they take the sensible action when there is no owner or no apparent owner of a site. In this way there could be some public benefit by the local authority doing what the owner is not willing to cope with himself. That then is an area I would like examined. It involves a number of sections in the Bill. I hope something will be done about them.

I have a point to make in relation to the working of the Minister's speech and the explanatory memorandum. On Page 13 of the Minister's speech he says:

In all urban areas, or in such county council areas as the Minister may prescribe, an annual derelict sites levy will be imposed by local authorities on so-called urban land.

The explanatory memorandum says at Part III:

This Part provides for an annual levy by local authorities on all urban land.

That is not what the Bill says. I think it is unusual and not particularly desirable that, whatever about the Minister's speech where a certain latitude is allowed, there should be something in the explanatory memorandum that is not what is in the Bill. On the question of the levy section 24 (1) provides anomalously for the levy. It reads:

There shall be charged, levied and paid for each local financial year beginning with such year as may be prescribed, in respect of all urban land in relation to which a market value has been determined and stands entered on the register on the first day of January of that local financial year, a levy to be called the derelict sites levy.

It does not say who levies it. It says it shall be levied. We will go on to find out who is actually doing the job. It says at subsections (2), (3) and (4):

(2) The derelict sites levy shall be paid by the owner of urban land to the local authority...

(3) The amount of the derelict sites levy shall be a proportion of the market value of the urban land which shall be prescribed for each urban area, from time to time, by the Minister...

(4) Subject to subsection (5), the derelict sites levy shall be payable on a demand being made by the local authority in that behalf...

The levy is not determined, as the speech and the explanatory memorandum say, by local authorities; it is a levy by the Minister which accrues to local authorities, and it is not really quite equivalent. There is a fairly substantial point involved. Deputy McDowell raised an aspect of that point which I will come back to in a moment. The wording in the explanatory memorandum and in the speech are loose and that looseness should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the procedure provided for here is that the Minister shall decide the levy but the proceeds will go to the local authority.

What about Deputy McDowell's point about the Minister prescribing the levy? It is a very serious point and I am surprised that, in the light of the recent Supreme Court decision in regard to the expenditure tax legislation, a Bill should come before the House which purports to give to a Minister the right to vary a levy which is a tax — what else can one call it; a levy is another word for tax — up and down as he wishes, and apparently to vary it at different levels for different local authority areas. That is a power of taxation which certainly should be vested in the Dáil. Deputy McDowell expressed some hestitation at this point. I have no hesitation in expressing it. I think it is highly improbable that the Supreme Court would ever uphold the power of the Minister to tax by varying from .01 per cent to 10 per cent a levy of this kind, for different parts of the country at different rates without the approval of Dáil Éireann. It is not that I do not want the Minister to do it. I want him to do it. I fear however that if this is not remedied by providing for such decisions to be approved by Dáil Éireann, there will be a problem. I was going to suggest that this be done by way of order but here we have to be careful. I think the Supreme Court decision made it clear that it has to be by way of legislation. There is a problem here, and I hope the Minister will address it because it would be disastrous, with all the hopes the people have that something useful will be done by introducing this levy, if the levy were challenged and it were found, that the Minister had no power to tax without the approval of the Dáil, if that failed and we had to start all over again. It would be a great pity. I do think in this case constitutional advice should be sought and regard should be had to it.

I hope, by the way, that the Attorney General's advice has been sought on the Bill. I know it has gone through the parliamentary draftsman but I would hope that on the constitutionality of it the advice solely of the Department would not be relied on. It is not that I doubt the Department particularly but I found in Government a strong tendency on the part of Departments to offer the advice that something was not unconstitutional and not to seek the Attorney-General's view and they were sometimes wrong, to put it mildly. Government Departments do not always seem to be aware, even with the advice of their own legal advisers, of the possible full implications of what they are doing and do not always seem willing to seek and get the Attorney General's advice. On a number of occasions in Government I had to insist that the Attorney-General's advice be sought and in several instances my suspicions were vindicated and the Attorney General's advice was needed. This legislation has probably been vetted by the Attorney General but I think there should be another look at it especially in the light of the Supreme Court decision. Is it possible that the Bill was drafted before the Supreme Court decision or that full account was not taken of it? Certainly I would be very unhappy about a provision that might fail. It is not that I do not want the Minister to have the power if in fact the Constitution allowed it, but I feel it is important that this process of levying this tax is put on a secure footing that could not be challenged in the courts. I am sure the Opposition parties would go along with whatever is the simplest way to secure this result. I do not think anyone would want to stand in the way of the Minister by opposing the levy, but we would like to be able to play whatever role, as a Legislature, is necesary to ensure that the Minister's view of what levy is required is given the authority of the Dáil. I doubt if we would be quarrelling much with the figures but even if some carping critics would quarrel with them, by and large we would prefer that the thing was made secure by being put under the authority of the Dáil in whatever way seems to the Minister most convenient and least troublesome.

I notice that the Minister says that unoccupied property cannot be rated. That is the existing arrangement. Perhaps it is the law, I do not know; but if it is we are here to change it. Why should we not apply the ordinary rates, whatever they are, as well as the levy? Why should people, by virtue of taking the roof off a house so that it becomes derelict and they can develop it and make money, be exempted from rates? Leaving aside the levy altogether I do not think the action of causing dereliction should exempt one from a normal tax. I would like to think that the ordinary rates would apply and that whatever levy is appropriate on top of the rates could then be imposed. I do not know what action is required for that. The Minister says that unoccupied property cannot be rated. It is certainly not a constitutional point. It must be either a legal point or an administrative point. Whatever it is it is something that we have the power to remedy. I suggest that he consider the question of applying rates in these cases and, indeed, in the case of domestic property, applying the rates also. There is a domestic rate which is suspended for the present but is still there in embryonic form and could be applied. Exemption from rates in these instances is a mistake and should be looked at.

I come now to deal with penalties. Others have made the point, with which I agree, that the penalties are ludicrously low in certain cases. I see the Minister's justification for this. In order for the matter to be dealt with in the District Court penalties have to be limited to appropriate penalties for minor offences. We know that provision exists. The penalties bear so little relationship to the benefits that a developer can secure by deliberately causing and permitting dereliction with a view to evading some requirements of the law, the planning code or whatever it may be, with a view to making a large profit, that I do not think these provisions for penalties could be accepted by this House in this way.

I recall other legislation where there was provision for penalties at a certain level if the charge was taken to a District Court, but on indictment to the appropriate court — the High Court or the Circuit Court — different penalties could be levied. It may be that that is a practice only in criminal law I am not a practising lawyer and so, therefore, I cannot recall. I have suggested in this case that two levels of penalties, as in such other legislation, should be applied so that in any case where the prosecuting authority takes the view that what is involved is not merely an act of neglect — somebody not noticing something becoming derelict or not being alert or concerned about it — but a deliberate act designed to secure a large profit far beyond the fine that could be imposed in the District Court, in such cases the matter could be taken to the Circuit Court, or whatever is the appropriate court, with penalties of a penal kind.

Such penalties for developers have to be very large indeed given the kinds of profits that can and have been made in a number of instances about which we all know of deliberate dereliction. If that process of having a dual system of charging people in the District Court or on indictment in a higher court for some reason cannot apply in this case but can apply more strictly in criminal cases, maybe another offence could be created. I am reluctant to suggest this because the other offence would have to impute some particular kind of inordinate blame, that there was deliberate dereliction for something of that kind for the purpose of profit and, of course, that could be very difficult to prove. I would hope that this matter of adequate penalties can be dealt with by a dual system, such as I have proposed, rather than by having to have a different offence which might be difficult to prove in a particular case. It is a very important point and I think public opinion would be very concerned if the Bill proves in this respect inadequate and if there are flagrant cases of people allowing dereliction to continue and refusing to obey the law in order to derive a profit from it. In a case like that we need far greater penalties than are provided for here.

We are dealing with cases where in some instances there is the strongest possible suspicion, to put it mildly, that dereliction was positively caused by the action of the owner and in other cases it is quite clear that he encouraged others to cause dereliction, for example, by encouraging people to come and strip the lead from the roof so that the roof would eventually fall in. We know of such cases. Perhaps it would be difficult to prove that he gave the nod or the wink for the purpose of a particular instance, but no one is in doubt or is lacking in moral certainties that in some cases that is what happened. In those cases the penalty that should be imposed for dereliction being allowed should be on a far larger scale. Unless it is on a scale that makes it not worthwhile to carry out such a practice then the Bill will not, in respect of the cases, be worth the paper it is written on. The profits are very large. In a particular case an existing building may have a limited value in the view of the developer but if he can get rid of it he may be able to build a supermarket, a shopping centre or an office block and the property may be worth millions. That simply is not tolerable because he should be dealt penalties of £1,000 or £100 per day. Whatever reasons have been suggested for limiting actions of the District Court, another way round them must be found to deal with these cases. I do not think public opinion would accept that the Bill would ab initio be so obviously flagrantly inadequate to deal with these kinds of cases. In all parties people would be concerned that this would be put right. Exactly how it should be done is a technical matter for the Minister and his advisers but I hope they will examine that.

I hope these comments have been helpful. The Bill is a potentially valuable one. I am worried though about that aspect of it which seems most difficult to remedy — I hope it will not be impossible; that is the aspect I dealt with earlier about structures and sites and the clearing of sites but in a way that does not seem to require that any type of action is necessary. I do not know what can be done about that. It is a very fundamental point. The Minister gave a small nod and I hope that is a sign of encouragement. I hope that out of this debate, in which people have tried to be constructive, will emerge a number of amendments that will turn it into the kind of Bill which the Minister will be proud of.

I welcome this Bill warmly. It is effective legislation. It has been well drafted and as such it is long overdue. For many years now in this House I have been advocating the introduction of such legislation and in particular the introduction of a levy on definable derelict sites. There has, indeed, been great lethargy and not an inconsiderable amount of quiet opposition to the introduction of this urgently needed legislation. On that basis I commend the Minister and the parliamentary draftsman for bringing it before us in this month of February.

I want to make one broad observation about the implementation of the Bill. We have seen a growing number of powers of local authorities in recent years, new statutory provisions relating to pollution. We have new building regulations which are being implemented and which are due to be implemented and in some instances have not been implemented. We have a need for more extensive control and enforcement measures in relation to fire prevention. A whole range of pollution control measures have been introduced at local level. We have further very necessary developments in the public interest relating to planning and development. To add to all that social obligations are being imposed on the local authorities such as the necessary social provision for homeless persons, the control and general policing of dogs. The impact of environmental legislation on local authorities has grown and the local authorities are obliged to implement the statutes. This brings me to the nub of my point. The growing body of legislation has to be policed and imposed on very sharp, clever, well financed individuals who, for example, may own derelict sites and want to avoid doing anything except when it benefits their own bank account.

I cannot see how the local authorities can discharge those functions in the current climate of reduced budgets and very substantially reduced staff. Quite recently the Minister for Finance told me in a written reply that in 1989 there would be 500 fewer staff employed at national level by the local authorities. The public service numbers are due to drop this year by 3,000. How are the local authorities going to implement this Bill when we know there has been a virtual exodus from the local authorities of senior staff, from engineering level down to the rank and file clerical officer grade? By virtue of the major cuts in the rate support grant, the local authorities will not be in a position to effectively implement the complex provisions of this legislation together with all the other requirements imposed on them each year. To that extent I have the greatest reservations about seeing the Derelict Sites Bill impacting on the local scene. There is an absolute requirement on the Minister to ensure that the moneys will be provided. Admittedly, the Minister states that there should be some moneys accruing to local authorities from the levy, but as the Minister well knows, the general development levies which the local authorities impose go into the generality of their income. Any increase in staffing or any departure from the embargo or from the promotional rigours laid down by the Department of Finance are carried through to the Department of the Environment and the local authorities. The levy of itself would not be sufficient to offset the effects of such decisions. In the greater Dublin area several hundred staff have left the local authority, ranging from engineers, building inspectors right down to clerical staff in the various offices and on that basis I cannot see how this Bill will be rigorously implemented. That is the essential point I wish to make.

Indeed, as one travels not only throughout the greater Dublin area but throughout the country one finds a new version of the derelict site, the derelict site is now under the springs of one's car as one meets pothole after pothole on the county roads. Many of the non-primary routes are now in an appalling condition and there are patches of pure dereliction. In an ironic sort of way, I think the Minister is providing for a widening of the definition of derelict sites.

I would now like to refer to the waiver of the levy. I can appreciate that, constitutionally, there must be provision for hardship, otherwise one could find oneself in considerable difficulty, but section 27 provides that the levy may be waived by a local authority in cases of hardship. Frankly, I would have preferred if this was a reserved power of the Minister and that it would be obligatory on the local authority to insist that the levy be paid but that the individual concerned would have the right of appeal to the Minister of the day to have the levy waived. If this were so there would at least be some prospect that the local authority members would not bow to the invariable pressures to waive the levies on subjective grounds of hardship. Any developer for multiple reasons can advance all sorts of reasons that he should not be obliged to pay the levy and invariably the local authority members are beseeched and canvassed and then give way and do not impose the levy.

A great ingredient of the Bill is that it imposes a levy on those who can well afford to pay but who are sitting on property, allowing it to go into general dereliction with the hope that sometime they can obtain a substantial capital gain from the disposal of a site or even a building. I put it to the Minister that the hardship clause is too broad and open-ended and presents an opportunity to mitigate the necessary constraints in the Bill. This could result in a substantial feature of the Bill being unduly watered down.

My next point relates to the timescales involved. I think the Minister may well and should look at the period of understanding afforded by the local authority to the person on whom the strictures of the Bill are being imposed. I can well appreciate that renewal dates and extension provisions are necessary.

In my constituency I am sick and tired of walking or driving past derelict sites. I am sick of being contacted by constituents who want to know if anything is being done about a particular derelict site. The Salthill Hotel site in Dún Laoghaire has lain dormant for years now. For years there was a very big crane on the site but nothing at all happened. It became a feature of the landscape for five or six years.

In down town Dún Laoghaire there is another major shopping centre site only part of which has been developed and the rest has been lying idle for the best part of a decade and even now it is not being fully utilised. Developers should be compelled to complete developments. Many undeveloped sites are neglected, unsightly, objectionably half finished and have become simply deposits for the debris and all sorts of rubbish. The Minister should consider making very rigorous regulations under section 4 and under the general regulations in section 5. That would strengthen the overall provisions of the Bill.

Another aspect we have to be particularly careful about and which has worried me and a number of other people is that now there is substantial purchasing of inner city sites for prospective shopping centre developments. I am afraid that in the greater Dublin area there will be too many major shopping developments, as is manifestly evident already in south Dublin, and that in ten to 15 years those major developments will become semi-derelict because the piecemeal unco-ordinated highly individualistic developments which are taking place at a very substantial pace will not be economically viable and because there is not the population to support them, particularly on the retail side. That, in future, will bring about further decline and ultimately dereliction. This pinpoints the need for considerable co-ordination in the local authority in their development plans to ensure that in future we will not be faced with the prospect of dereliction inadvertently brought about by a whole series of planning permissions for commercial developments which cannot be guaranteed to pay their way even within a decade or 15 years.

I am concerned that in the broadest sense we have been badly served by a good deal of what has passed for town planning and development, particularly in the greater Dublin area but also in many parts of our urban conurbations throughout the country. Part of Dublin, the newest parts of Dublin, are semi-derelict in terms of planning. One only has to drive through County Dublin into the newer housing estates, into the newer areas which contain populations bigger than many counties in many instances, to see the appalling planning of the local authorities. Although there is rhythm after rhythm of housing development; one may well describe it as dereliction of the planning process as there are no community centres, educational structures have been belatedly built, shopping centres are miles away and transport facilities are often totally inadequate even in terms of basic car parking within the housing estates for those who live and work and rear their families there.

Admittedly there have been some substantial improvements in planning in the past five or six years but a lot of what passed in the sixties and seventies was shameful. We should be ashamed of it because it has added a dimension of environmental dereliction which today one finds difficult to understand as one visits those areas and as people desperately try to turn them into a living environment.

Unless the Minister for Finance brings pressure to bear on the Department this Bill will only be an interesting piece of legislation, a very valuable piece of legislation. Unless there are staff in the local authorities who will go out and face down the developers and the owners of derelict sites, and unless the local authorities are prepared not to contribute to dereliction, the real impact of this Bill will be substantially reduced.

That would be a pity because I strongly commend the Bill as excellent legislation in many respects. The Bill is long overdue. My party placed this legislation in their manifestos at every election for the past 12 to 15 years. We are pleased to give the Bill our support and to co-operate on Committee Stage in the further improvement of the Bill.

The Minister had to leave to attend an urgent meeting and he asked me to reply to the debate on his behalf. The Minister has left me his notes to refer in detail to some of the issues that had been raised in the Second Stage debate. The Minister thanks all the Deputies who contributed to the debate. The issues raised covered a wide variety of important aspects and emphasised the complexity of the questions and the variety of measures necessary to deal with the problem. The Minister expressed his deep appreciation for the constructive Second Stage debate and wished to refer in some detail to some of the points raised by Deputies.

Deputy Farrelly made a number of sensible points about the need for local authorities to get their houses in order in this area and about the value of taking early preventive action to prevent problems of dereliction. Deputy Farrelly as well as Deputy Keating spoke about the need for simpler CPO procedures and the Minister supports this aspiration but would point out that derelict sites legislation has traditionally embodied straightforward procedures for land acquisition by local authorities. These relatively simple procedures are contained in sections 15 to 20 of the Bill.

Deputy Keating spoke of certain problems which could affect the administration of the derelict sites levy. He objected to the inclusion of a waiver provision in Part III of the Bill. I should like to point out that waiver provisions are a standard and routine feature of local authority taxation and charging systems and they are not, as far as the Minister is aware, a concession to the perceived rights of property but rather a flexible instrument of administration commonly embodied in local government legislation. Deputy Keating also spoke about the difficulties of establishing ownership given the limitations of our system of land registration. Section 25 of the Bill, however, makes a derelict sites levy a charge on the land involved. In other words, however covert an owner may be, he or she will still have to reckon with the levy in the context of disposing in any way of his or her interest in the land.

Deputy Quinn spoke convincingly of the need for an overall urban strategy within which the Bill would need to be administered in urban areas. The Minister would fully endorse this point having already emphasised in his opening speech the inter-connection of planning, urban renewal and derelict sites policies. He would agree with Deputy Quinn that we must take care to avoid over-supplying the market with public lands at any given time. These, of course, are matters of administrative judgment rather than of the present draft legislation. It is unlikely that much of the land awarded by statutory bodies in urban areas would have been acquired compulsorily in any event provided the acquisition had taken place some time ago and compensation paid to the previous owner. The Minister's advice is that the courts would be most unlikely to question the bona fides of a CPO because its earlier purpose was no longer extant. Deputy Quinn spoke also about the dereliction of isolated older dwellings in rural areas. The Minister believes that this kind of situation is suitable for intervention under the Bill by the county councils concerned and he will highlight this when instructing the local authorities as to the implementation of the Bill.

Deputy Sherlock raised many interesting questions of detail on the interpretation of the Bill which by and large would be more appropriate to be teased out on Committee Stage. Briefly, dereliction is a somewhat relative concept in the sense that the condition of dereliction relates to the surroundings in which a structure is situated and its impact on a neighbourhood. A tasteful hoarding around a site might, therefore, in some circumstances be sufficient to render a site non-derelict but in other circumstances it might not.

Deputy Stafford spoke about the problems of dereliction in the north inner city of Dublin. The Minister shares the Deputy's confidence that the Bill will help us better to address these and similar problems in the future. Deputy O'Brien raised a number of interesting suggestions, including the encouragement of private property owners to undertake regular redecoration and refurbishment of their properties. He also spoke knowledgeably about the blighting effects of road proposals which are not implemented within a reasonable period. Deputy Wright emphasised that restoration rather than demolition was the preferred strategy in relation to many older buildings. These buildings can be of a heritage and tourism interest even on a minor scale and enlightened administration of the new Bill should operate to enhance these aspects.

Deputy Kemmy rightly stressed that first impressions of our towns and streetscapes can be lasting ones. He argued that we need to overcome our visual laziness and to realise the potential of many buildings of character and style. Deputy Mary Mooney drew on her experience of Dublin to illustrate the relevance of the Bill to the inner city problems. Deputy L. Burke spoke interestingly about the approach of Cork Corporation to problems of urban decay and particularly about their urban renewal programme. Deputy Batt O'Keeffe raised a number of interesting points and the Minister will consider these carefully between now and Committee Stage. Deputy Boylan spoke sensibly about the need for reasonably orderly colour schemes in housing estates and smaller towns. He rightly stressed that the proper management of dumps and roadside activities is most important to rural amenities. Deputy Flood stressed the central role of local authorities in the successful administration of the Bill and the Minister is pleased to have his endorsement, as a local government practitioner, of most of the proposals in the Bill.

Deputy Deenihan spoke of the importance of tidy streetscapes and landscapes for tourism. Both he and Deputy Sheehan spoke about the relevance of the urban renewal scheme in combatting dereliction. Deputy Sheehan spoke also of the dereliction problems as they affect rural Ireland. Deputy Higgins spoke of the credibility problems for some local authorities in the matter of land dereliction given the considerably derelict lands in their ownership. The Bill faces up honestly to this difficulty and it contains new powers which will allow the Minister to direct local authorities to remedy the condition of these sites or to sell the land. Deputy Taylor-Quinn asked if the definition of "derelict site" confined it to land in cities, town and villages. The answer is no, although part of the concept of dereliction involves detraction from surrounding properties or land.

Generally speaking the Minister was very encouraged with the positive and constructive contributions made by all Deputies. He welcomes the consensus that has emerged in the approach to dereliction which should enable all of us to construct a most worthwhile Bill between now and the remaining Stages.

Question put and agreed to.

When it is intended to take Committee Stage?

Next Tuesday, subject to agreement between the Whips.

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 21 February 1989.
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