Gormley to tackle 'greedy' landowners

The soaring cost of building land is making vital infrastructure unaffordable, Environment Minister John Gormley has warned.

The minister promised measures to tackle the situation when he addressed the annual conference of the Irish Planning Institute (IPI) in Westport, Co Mayo and said he would be introducing a designated land bill in the autumn.

The attack on rising land prices came shortly after the Department of Education was forced to pay €45m for a school site.

Mr Gormley said it was a major problem that huge rights are afforded to private property owners under the Constitution. "We cannot govern if the price of building land continues to escalate in this way," Mr Gormley stated.

With the Department of Education recently being forced to pay €45m for a school site, the Minister said the situation was now making schools unaffordable and making it hugely expensive to provide infrastructure.

The minister indicated that he agreed with a suggestion at the conference earlier by IPI President Andrew Hind that developers should be required to pay more towards the cost of providing schools, public water and sewage facilities, roads and footpaths and public transport infrastructure.

In the keynote speech to the conference, Mr Hind said the combined effect of our planning and taxation systems seems to have facilitated the making of vast personal and corporate fortunes by landowners and developers while at the same time many developments lack basic social and physical infrastructure and sustainable transport options.

While State and local authorities have to produce vast sums of money to remedy the problem, landowners and developers "are immersed in colossal profits."

Problems

Mr Hind said that one of the problems the Government has faced in recent years has been that of providing the social and physical infrastructure for new developments.

"All around the country our failure to deliver properly designed water and waste water infrastructure has left not just individual houses but significant residential areas with sub-standard water supplies and waste water treatment infrastructure," he added.

Too many developments lacked even basic social and physical infrastructure.

Mr Hind called for an urgent revision of the system of contributions which developers and landowners have to pay.

Tom Shiel and Treacy Hogan
Irish Independent

www.buckplanning.ie