Sir, - The revelation at the Flood Tribunal of what Seamus Brennan calls "prima facie evidence" of corruption in Dublin County Council gives rise to the following questions:
1. Is there any direct causal link between the inflated price of housing in the Dublin area and the allegedly corrupt activities of certain developers and politicians?
2. What level of corruption would be required to invalidate decisions taken by Dublin County Council? By that I mean, would a vote be deemed invalid if 25 per cent, 50 per cent, 75 per cent or 99 per cent of the council's elected representatives were found to be in receipt of bribes?
3. Should the High Court, the Supreme Court or Dail Eireann find any decision of the Dublin County Council to be invalid, what remedies are open to the body politic?
4. Is it possible that there is something inherently wrong with a planning strategy which appears to be so open to corruption?
5. Given that Dublin is a comparatively small city with a comparatively small population in European and North American terms, and that there is no actual shortage of land, is it not possible that there is something fundamentally wrong with a planning system that appears to inflate the price of building land?
6. Is there not something intrinsically perverse about a zoning system that effectively facilitates the upward re-valuation of land by public representatives at enormous cost to the people they represent, and to the enormous gain of a privileged few?
7. If the allegations of corruption in Dublin County Council are upheld, is there any way in which the community can recoup the corrupt gains which any developer might have enjoyed?
8. If, as has been suggested by a number of people, there is in fact enough land currently zoned for building purposes, is it not possible to require that the owners of such land develop it or forfeit it compulsorily at its current market value, thus creating a pool of development land which might be sold on to builders who were willing to use it for the benefit of the community? - Yours, etc.,
Paul McGuirk, Castle Park Road, Sandycove, Co Dublin.