Sir, – Olivia Kelly's informative article "Affordable housing – can Land Development Agency succeed where others have failed?" (Analysis, March 6th) covers the topic very well, but what neither it nor most of the learned commentary on the housing crisis mentions is the elephant in the room – that the root cause of the high cost of residential property is the high cost of land, supported as it is by a raft of State policies which encourage land to be treated as a speculative commodity.
The impetus behind the Land Development Agency (LDA) is a good one, but the draft legislation contains a fatal flaw, which is that when purchasing suitable land from other public bodies, the LDA will be required to pay market value.
Since the purpose of the purchase would be to develop housing, this can only mean that the market value is the residential land-use value, whereas the current zoning of most of the land involved would mean a substantially lower value, eg institutional land.
In setting up the LDA, the Government is creating an unprecedented opportunity to make a real difference in the supply of housing, but if it persists in insisting on market value for the public lands involved, it will have done nothing substantial to improve the affordability of the homes that are to be built. – Yours, etc,
CIARÁN McGAHON,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.
