Madam, - The current reports of land speculation in Charleville, Co Cork, highlight the cause of the major portion of our current house price inflation, namely land values.
The 2004 report of the All- Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, on private property, recommended a return to the Kenny Report of the early 1970s which proposed that any land required by a local authority could be purchased by that authority at existing use value plus 25 per cent and that this would not be found to be unconstitutional. In the Charleville case this would have resulted in the 20 acres being purchased by the local authority for about €1 million, not the €8 million sought by the landowner, let alone the €11.6 million reportedly sought by the speculators.
This whole issue was ducked by politicians in the 1970s and, it would appear, is being ducked again, as no legislation is being proposed long after the Oireachtas report was published.
Surely now is the time to press our politicians to legislate, with affordable housing being such an important issue with so many voters. - Yours, etc,
JAMES PIKE, President, Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland, Merrion Square, Dublin 2.