Local authorities are entitled to acquire land cheaply from developers, saysan Oireachtas Committee, writes Arthur Beesley, Political Reporter
The Government should immediately implement measures to give local authorities the power to acquire land from property speculators for a fraction of its market value, an Oireachtas committee has concluded.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution believes there is no Constitutional impediment to such a measure, which could be used to prevent speculators from distorting the housing market by hoarding land.
After a year-long examination of property rights in the Constitution, the committee says that the Government should recoup increases in the value of rezoned land for the community.
In a draft of a report to be published within weeks, the committee also calls for reform of the planning process to restore public confidence in the system after the disclosures at the planning tribunal.
The committee believes the Government could recoup windfall gains through the imposition of development levies or through taxation.
Such taxes would be charged in respect of the gains from windfall increases in property values after rezoning or set in the form of an annual site value tax.
It says alternative means of "recouping betterment" include giving local authorities the power to seek agreements from land-owners on infrastructure as part of the grant of planning permission.
The report calls for the implementation of the central proposal in the Kenny report that land required for development by local authorities should be acquired at agricultural prices plus 25 per cent. Such prices are significantly lower than the value of land zoned for residential use.
Such a mechanism was first mooted in a 1973 report by Mr Justice Kenny on the price of building land but never introduced. In conclusions seen by The Irish Times, the committee says that it "would almost certainly pass constitutional challenge".
To be published in the coming weeks, the committee's report says the Kenny report proposals were in some respects "too conservative" because there was no necessity to involve the High Court in the process.
The committee accepted the view that high house prices in urban areas were not the result of high development land prices. "Instead, high development land prices result from high house prices."
But while the committee says that those who made submissions to it "were unable to provide clear evidence of land hoarding in the sense of a deliberate policy of accumulating land holdings and withholding these from the market", it says that "resourceful entrepreneurs will take a system as they find it and work it to their advantage".
The report continues: "The planning system as operated at present facilitates those with the resources to buy up development land and hold on to it: this as we have shown, creates a distortion in the market."
On planning, the report says the revelations at the planning tribunal "have clearly shaken public confidence" in the role of politicians in land zoning decisions.
While the committee says council members should retain control over zoning, it says such decisions should be based "only on proposals from the council's planning professionals".
The report adds: "There is a need for continued and increased national planning by the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government." This should cover development control and rural housing, it said.
The report calls for a "one-stop" planning process for transport, sewerage and water supply projects and for a special High Court division to deal with infrastructure and environmental planning.