Capping the price of development land would be permissible under the present Constitution and the Government should legislate for it as a matter of urgency, the Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said yesterday.
He was making a submission on behalf of the Labour Party at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution hearing on private property rights and whether two articles should be amended.
The Labour leader said the issue was whether or not the current Constitution was an impediment to seeking to legislate on the cost of land, for example, to cap the price of land.
"The Labour Party's submission is that there is no such impediment," he said.
The submission stated that legislation should provide that land being compulsorily acquired by local authorities for development purposes should be capped at existing use value plus a reasonable addition.
Mr Rabbitte said the issue had become particularly urgent in the last decade when house prices had increased at five times the inflation rate. The biggest gap opened up between the cost of buying houses and of building them due to the price of land.
Land was hoarded and drip-fed into the market as it suited the owners. The slow release and unavailability was a major factor on equilibrium in the market. He said local authorities and housing associations could not afford to buy land.
"Provided there is not an unjust attack and it is for a socially just purpose, to cap the price of development land would be permissible under the present Constitution," he said.
"I think jurisprudence is that the two articles mutually inform each other and are not to be used as an excuse for shying away from legislative action," he said.
The way to proceed was to legislate and they would know in a couple of months whether it would be struck down and have to be tested constitutionally. "I don't think there is a political divide on this issue," he said.
Another submission was made on behalf of the Irish Traveller Movement and Pavee Point.
"There should be constitutional recognition that the Traveller community has a cultural right to pursue a nomadic way of life and the State should be obliged to vindicate that right in so far as possible," the submission said.
Mr Paul Gartlan, of the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers, said placing a constitutional cap on land prices would appear to be against the spirit of the constitutional right to private property. He said there were clear signs that the market was reaching a position of equilibrium. He criticised the Irish stamp duty regime as penal. He also said Government policy towards rural development needed to focus on creating a vibrant rural economy and that planning laws needed to become less rigid.
Mr Toale Ó Muire, president of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, recommended that a parallel expert group on property law be set up in order to report within a set time on the wider and more complex land-related issues.
The Institution of Engineers of Ireland submission stated that one of the major reasons for the poor record of delivery to date of major projects was because not sufficient emphasis was placed on the article referring to the exigencies of the common good.