The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is to seek new powers for local authorities which would allow them to buy at agricultural prices land zoned for housing.
The general secretary of the ICTU, Mr Peter Cassells, says that congress will be making its proposal shortly at the Housing Forum, which has been established as part of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.
"If the old chestnut of constitutional rights is used as an argument against such badly-needed change, then the Government should call a referendum immediately," he said. Mr Cassells was speaking yesterday at a seminar on housing at Congress House, the ICTU headquarters.
"The price of building land is a major cause of the exorbitant price of houses and of our current housing crisis. The ridiculously distorted value of land bought at an agricultural price, once it has been rezoned for housing, is the reason for much of the corruption being exposed at the Flood tribunal.
"An oligopoly of owner-speculators who control the supply of building land in the Dublin region are also able to further manipulate and distort the market so that the price they demand bears no relationship to the value of the land."
The ICTU would use the forum provided for in the PPF "to allow local authorities purchase land for housing at agricultural prices. It is morally and socially unacceptable that any individual or company should be able to blackmail the community into paying them 30 or 40 times the price they paid for the land."
Because decisions on rezonings ultimately rested with politicians, Mr Cassells described opportunities for profit-making on such a scale as creating "an occasion of sin" which no amount of political safeguards could prevent. "There will always be a small minority who will not be able to resist the opportunity to line their pockets at public expense.
"The new policy of paying only the agricultural price of land would remove the rewards for corruption. Also, the consequent reduction in the price of building land will lead to a reduction in the cost of housing. So the benefits to the public and to public life will far outweigh any disappointment caused to a very small number of land speculators."
Pressure is growing on congress from trade unionists for a review of the pay terms of the PPF. The forum is one of the new mechanisms provided for, which allow inflationary pressures to be addressed outside the traditional industrial relations arena.