A Bill aimed at stabilising and capping the price of building land will be published by the Labour Party later this year, its leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said last night.
It was time to end the "speculation and profiteering" in building land and to "break the hold of a small number of wealthy interests over what is a vital community resource", he told guests at a SIPTU dinner in Galway, held as part of its biennial conference.
Mr Rabbitte was also sharply critical of the proposal by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, to either increase or abolish the limits on donations to political parties.
"There is no justification for such an initiative other than the insatiable demand of the Fianna Fáil machine for more and more resources," he said.
On stabilising the price of building land, he said the Labour Party had come to the conclusion after a "considerable amount of study" that there was no constitutional barrier to legislation in this area.
Some people in the Government, he said, were insisting that the rights of land and major property owners were sacrosanct, and must not be interfered with even if the result was more affordable housing for thousands of young families in the future.
"It is long past time to challenge that right-wing and selfish view."
A significant factor in the rapid rise in house prices, he said, was the cost of building land, which, according to a recent study, now accounted for between 40 and 50 per cent of the price of a new house. At the start of the economic boom, land costs had constituted between 10 and 15 per cent of new house prices.
Mr Rabbitte said that to take one example of what was happening, more than half the development land for housing in the Fingal area of Dublin was owned by 25 individuals and organisations.
"They control, or can control, the rate at which that land is released to the marketplace, and in doing so they can effectively control its price. There is no visible sign of competition among them - or if there is, it seems to be a competition to drive land prices up. This has been a scandal for many years, and one that must be tackled in the interests of the entire community."
It was time that the concerns of the trade union movement, and of working people and families throughout Ireland, were effectively met, and Labour would give the Oireachtas an opportunity to act, he said.
The only way to stabilise building land prices was to ensure there was an adequate supply released to the market each year.
On the issue of donations to political parties and election candidates, he said Fianna Fáil's view of itself as "part of the permanent government" had given it "a voracious appetite for funds".
When the present limit on party donations of €6,384 was introduced in 2001, Labour had suggested a limit of €2,000 for parties and €1,000 for candidates. It believed the same limits, of about €2,500 and €1,250, respectively, would be appropriate still.
