Richard Boyd Barrett: Calls for Public Ownership of Zoned Land

I'm greatly concerned by all of this, to be honest, following on from the last questions. I think any new zonings should be, in fact I think the entire public land bank, the entire zoned land bank, should be in public ownership. So if we need to zone more land, it should all be owned by the local authorities or by the state in some shape or form, so there can't be speculation. There's absolutely nothing in you said to give us any comfort that there won't be rampant speculation. As soon as this land is zoned, assuming it's in private hands, its value immediately is going to go through the roof. You're going to be enriching people. Now why on earth would we be enriching private landowners in the current climate, rather than ensuring that the state owns that land and insures? Now that might involve letting private builders, in fact it probably will involve private builders building on land, but where the government controls it, and ensures that there isn't speculation, and it keeps the price down, which is a major contributing factor to the unaffordability of the stuff that's being built at the moment. I would also like to have, now maybe these are available, but the Minister can point me to where they are, can we just have the basic facts and figures about how much zoned land is currently there, how many planning permissions are unactivated, because from what I can see from your guidelines, the reason you're saying we need, local authorities can go 50% beyond the baseline, is not because in many cases there isn't enough zoned land, but it is because the zoned land has unactivated permissions. In other words, there's already people speculating on it. So what you're saying is, well, we'll zone more, but potentially just, just extending the problem. So we need, we need, like, the evidence for all of this. In Dunleary, they were discussing that there is 9,000 unactioned permissions in Dunleary, right, which would be sufficient to meet the housing needs of the county. So there isn't actually any need for any rezonings. Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't rezone, by the way, but I'm absolutely against us just willy-nilly rezoning if it's just going to enrich private owners of land, but not guarantee housing delivery or affordable housing delivery and potentially be another area of speculation. So what do you say? And can we have the hard evidence about this, about how many permissions there are, how much zoned land there are, how many units that could deliver, how much of is unactioned? Unactioned? We need, we need, you know, figures. No, Deputy, I'm happy to get that for the committee, and I will get that for the number of unactioned planning permissions and the amount of zoned land across the country. Across Dublin, it's about 44,000, but I don't have the figure for where there is existing plannings, but where there's no work so ongoing or haven't commenced. I don't have the figure for the wider country at the top of my head, but I will certainly get it, and the amount of land that's owned as well across the country to get that sent to the committee. I suppose, look, the national planning framework has been through a significant process over the last number of years, and it has identified a need for additional zoning to build more homes. And we do need more zoning to ensure that there is competition in the market as well to get homes built. There is a residential zoned land tax to target those who are land hoarding in relation to delivery reforms as well. But the Shirley Ministry recognises it as completely ineffective, that the residential zoned land tax has been completely ineffective. There's 44,000 in Dublin, and that figure hasn't changed much in quite a few... I remember there was a figure of about 50,000, so it's now 44,000, and that was quite a few years ago. So there's rampant, rampant land hoarding and land banking going on, and the potential for us... And who is even going to decide, like, what land is, you know, at local authority level? Who will be making the recommendations? Who's lobbying for particular lands to be rezoned? Like, this is wide open for corruption. Wide open for it. So you need to give us some serious reassurance, and we need the hard facts on this, that this is necessary. There is not going to be a subject of massive speculation, hoarding, and just exacerbating the problems that created the crisis in the first place. Yeah, thank you, Deputy. So the additional zoned land is very much necessary for the predicted number of homes needed over the coming decade, so it is. And that's why land does need to be rezoned. There are robust measures in local authorities. It is the local authorities themselves who will decide what land is zoned. The Department of Housing or myself will have no role in that. There are robust measures within local authorities, and matters need to be done and will be done in a transparent manner. And people can examine what is proposed. There's probably consultations. And people can look at what land is proposed to be rezoned and kind of have their input in relation to that. And ultimately needs to be voted on by the local authority for this land to be rezoned.