Sir, – Donal McGrath (Letters, November 17th) suggests that, in order to reduce the cost of constructing housing, the State should seize the necessary land by compulsory purchase order (CPO), paying only agricultural price plus 25 per cent.
It is suggested that there should be no legal issue with this on the basis that as the “Government is already able to compulsorily purchase a citizen’s home for road building”.
The State indeed has the right to compulsorily purchase private property, at fair market value, in order to satisfy a public need. The snag is that the property needs to be specifically essential in satisfying a particular public need. It thus possible to order the purchase of land for roads, harbours, airports, defence, etc, because the State can demonstrate that the location of a required property is essential to the public good it wishes to satisfy.
However, for housing, one location is pretty much as good as another. The State cannot demonstrate specifically why one particular field is essential to the public good, while all of the other fields nearby are not. For this reason, the owner of a field has good reason to believe that a legal challenge to a CPO would be successful.
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Almost the only recommendation left untried from the Kenny report at this stage is that of building out essential infrastructure and service (water, sewage, etc) over a very wide area, rather than extending gradually on the outskirts of towns. While this would require significant investment and time, the reasoning was that it would enable high-volume construction in much wider range of locations, creating competition between landowners to sell their land, and reducing the price of development land substantially. – Yours, etc,
JOHN THOMPSON,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7.