Richard Boyd Barrett: Calls to End Land Speculation in Housing

Thanks very much, Chair, and apologies, I wasn't here for some of the discussion, I had to go over to the door, so if I'm repeating questions, apologies. Yeah, the, I mean, is broadly speaking what Okulan and yourselves, Tree Shield, yeah, I'm not as familiar with you, but is to take the sort of land speculation sort of element out of the whole thing, which is very commendable. And, I mean, is there any good reason, you probably think, well, it's just politically it's not going to happen, but it's certainly my view, and I would advocate for it, so I just wonder, have you any thoughts on it, that we should just take it out of its housing, full stop, that we should take land speculation out of, you know, out of the entire equation. And I think, but maybe you can tell me, but this has been done in some places, I think Finland, for example, in Helsinki, I think they've done it, where the entire land bank for building is, you know, it's the state decides what is done with it, and the objective of their decisions in that regard, and the objective of their decisions in that regard are to do with providing housing for people, rather than people who might privately own land, deciding what to do with it in the interests of profit, corporate profit or whatever. I mean, would it be a good idea to just take the entire land bank, you know, for building out of, out of the area of speculative and profit making? I mean, I mean, there is an issue with, I mean, land is at the root of, of housing supply, and, you know, he who controls the land is in a position to decide, to a large extent, the extent, the, the rate at which that land gets built out. And, I mean, if you look, you mentioned Helsinki, but, I mean, Singapore is the, is the classic example where, it's an island, they realise they have very little land, they have nowhere to go, and, you know, when, that they, I think 80% of the housing in Singapore is owned by the state, the state decides, you know, at the start of a year, we need to build 30,000 houses, so we'll build 30,000. They get it wrong sometimes, sometimes they miss the target, and they go too low or too high, but they do have that way of doing it. But that's, I mean, we're probably straying well beyond the subject of this particular, you know, housing committee, the session in relation to community land housing, but certainly... But you're asking for a portion of the land, isn't it, to be handed over to your sector, and I'm just saying, well, why wouldn't it go the whole way? We would, I suppose, if we looked at what's worked in other countries, it has been where a, where you have public land, public development, you have private development, and you have community land development. Is there, is there any good reason for people being able to speculate on the land, on the building land bank? Because I can't think of a single one. No, I agree with you, like, I mean, and I'll be called radical left, even though I'm not. I believe that our model actually helps capitalism to work better. But I agree with you. I see absolutely no value at all in land speculation. And I would actually, you know, go further, and I am straying a bit as well now, I'd say, but I would go a little bit further and say that the whole social and affordable housing area needs to be taken out of the hands of private developers, and even out of the hands of private funding, and people, others, you know, who are not as close to the centre as I might be, will disagree with that, and say, no, we need them, because otherwise you'll get no delivery and you'll get no money into the country. I'm not going to argue the case now, but I would happily argue over a cup of coffee with anybody. And I have no doubt at all that we could, as a country, deliver as many social and affordable houses as we need just using the state and keeping the land within the ownership of the state. And did you give figures, just so people understand what's at stake in this, you probably did, but if the land costs are taken out for you, and for that matter the profit motive is taken out, what can you deliver houses at these days compared to what the market's doing? OK, well, you see, the difficulty there is that I can tell you what we could deliver the map before you had the rapid inflation, and inflation has levelled off a bit now, and we depend on private contractors, and we need private contractors to do our building for us. We don't need private developers. I differentiate completely between big private developers and private contractors. There are private contractors who are there just to build, and they will finish one job and do it well and move on to the next job. But you're cutting out the big developers' margin. You're cutting out the extra that they need to make on land. I can't give you actual figures because of the way the inflation has gone, you know. But what I can tell you, that there's no better time to start than immediately. We should have started it 20 years ago, we should have even started it 10 years ago, but we can start it now. And again, you may have answered this. What are the blocks for you? Because it's eminently sensible. I mean, I might like to go even further, as I've indicated, right? But what are the blocks for you? Well, and maybe you can refresh my memory, Hugh. I think that one of the last times I engaged with you, you had said you were trying to engage with the New Yorktown County Council over land up in Rat Michael to build out a site there. And you just couldn't get it off them, basically. And nothing has happened to that site, by the way. No, nothing has happened to that. Nothing has happened to that. I mean, could you just remind me? And is that, is the sort of blockage that you, or the resistance, or the, whatever it was, what happened there that they didn't, they weren't open to your offer? And what other blockages, and maybe Trishields, I could say this as well, are there to getting these sort of schemes going, affordable housing schemes on a not-for-profit basis going? Yeah, that particular one, they decided that, you know, they had some other use for it, and that was it, basically. And I know it has... Must have kept it secret. I do think there was some water services difficulties as well, but I think that that has been addressed in the meantime, because I know that there was not a lot of work done up that way with water, so I suspect it will go for development soon. And I hope for affordable, but, yeah, other than that, I can't, I can't. Rosie? Yeah, no, I suppose, you know, you're talking sort of, you know, about, for me, it's land, but I would really like also to focus a little bit on the sort of empowerment piece, and sort of people having the agency and resources. So, you know, very much our, kind of, you know, we heard from Thomas and the, kind of, case in Knocknaheeny and Cork, that there has been no affordable housing built there. It's, it's just, has been, kind of, social housing. And I think we're, you know, our, you know, our state very much is focusing on, kind of, housing as being, kind of, service-led delivery model, you know, through AHBs, which is fantastic. But I think the community-led housing, the community land trust is very much putting, kind of, housing back into the active citizenship piece. So, I would be, kind of, slightly weary, Richard, of your, kind of, position of, like, let's just, you know, kind of, state down. I think it has to be very much a, kind of, a relational, kind of, needs, things coming from, kind of, local need and being supported. So, I think that piece is, is what is, you know, missing. Certainly, you know, our project in Callan has already gone through a successful planning process. We're, kind of, back to Hugh, very much supporting us. We're back, and there was, kind of, cost issues with the first scheme. So, we're back and, kind of, going for a second round. And in that, we very much focus on the community land trust model, which I am really happy about. But there has definitely been a pullback from local authorities to projects across the country. And I would, there's probably a time very much relating to also when some of the Coulon's projects weren't, kind of, getting through all of the, all of the hoops. There has to be that, real focus on, you know, the supports that communities need to have, have the resources and the agency, really, to be involved in that, kind of, providing, kind of, housing at a, at a local need. And that's, that is, that's a, sort of, quite a big shift, I think, in focus and in, in resources and funding. Thank you.