Changes to the Constitution to make development land cheaper would be supported by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, delegates to its biennial conference were told yesterday.
Accusing land developers of "holding the next generation to ransom", the Congress president, Senator Joe O'Toole, said this small group of fewer than two dozen people had a grip, by way of ownership or options, on all potential development land for the foreseeable future.
"What people don't realise is there is no record of the lien that these people have on land in this country," he said.
Most of the deals were not registered anywhere, but were done by developers with farmers on the basis that the land would be sold if planning permission was secured.
"There's no exchange of deeds, just a signed-up agreement. This is going on all the time, to such an extent that at a recent meeting with members of the Government, they conceded that this was moving well outside the Dublin area, right up towards Drogheda and Dundalk and further out to the midlands as well," he told the conference in Tralee, Co Kerry.
The land, said Senator O'Toole, would eventually be released "in dribs and drabs" at exorbitant prices to builders who would add their own exorbitant profits to ensure young people buying houses were "squeezed to the last".
Congress would "fully support" any moves by the Government to amend the Constitution to give the State the right to make development land available at a reasonable price.
A similar change would reduce the "appalling cost" of land acquisition for transport infrastructure including roads, railways and tunnels.
It was "daft", he said, that development projects could be hindered because the Constitution gave people not only the right to own their land, "but also, effectively, everything underneath that land down to the centre of the earth".
Addressing the same conference, the Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said the Constitution had acquired a reputation for paying undue deference to property and the rights of property holders. He said he believed this reputation was undeserved and had been relied upon by those interested in preserving the status quo as an excuse for doing nothing.
The State was constitutionally entitled to interfere in private property rights if it had due regard to "the principles of social justice and the exigencies of the common good", he said.
"We believe that a constitutional challenge to legislation along the lines proposed by the Kenny Report would fail. The delimitation of property rights involved is not unjust because the landowners in question have done nothing to give their land its enhanced value and the community which has brought about the increased value should get the benefit of it."
Senator O'Toole, in his presidential address, also called for the introduction of a rights-based disability Bill this year as a "lasting memorial and testament" to society's commitment to the rights of people with disabilities.
