Sir, – I read with interest that 13.6 per cent of commercial properties in the State are currently vacant ("Closed shops and offices illustrate challenge of reviving town centres", Business, August 26th).
Elsewhere in the newspaper you reported on the Government's upcoming proposals to address the housing crisis ("Vacant property tax likely under Housing For All proposals", News, August 26th).
With the relentless move to online shopping and out-of-town retail parks, the core of many of our towns and cities have been hollowed out.
Hopefully the latest Government plans to take this opportunity to incentivise commercial property owners to repurpose these vacant commercial properties, especially in urban centres, returning them to residential use.
Our villages, towns and cities would be much more interesting, vibrant spaces if we filled these empty and often derelict properties with families. – Yours, etc,
DARREN
MAGUIRE,
Kilbride,
Co Meath.
Sir, – Jennifer Bray and Cliff Taylor write that a centrepiece of the long-term plan to solve the housing crisis will see "land value sharing" introduced, which would involve property owners and developers being compelled to pay the State up to half of the increase in the value of land when it is rezoned for housing and present this as "similar measures proposed as far back as the early 1970s in the Kenny report, a landmark document on controlling property prices, but never advanced" (News, August 26th).
These proposals are very different to Kenny and much more favourable to landowners. Kenny recommended that land would be purchased for housing by the State through compulsory purchase order (CPO) and the price paid would be a 25 per cent uplift on the pre-zoned price, in most cases agricultural prices. The current Government proposal protects windfall gains for developers by leaving the price set to the value uplift on a site after it is zoned for new homes, albeit with up to 50 per cent tax. Site costs are a significant element of housing costs here and this new proposal will not address that. However, Kenny’s original recommendations would.
Some question the constitutionality of the Kenny CPO proposal. However, CPOs are already used to force people out of their homes for road-building projects, with only 8 per cent uplift on the market prices of the house. A CPO on a field used for agricultural purposes with a compensation of 25 per cent would therefore also seem to comply with Article 43 of the Constitution, which states that the exercise of property rights must be reconciled with the “exigencies of the common good” without limiting this to any specific case. – Yours, etc,
DONAL McGRATH,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.