Sir, – Leo Roche supports a residential-zoned land tax and suggests that it might make landowners sell their rezoned land more quickly. He may be right (Letters, December 7th).
Unfortunately, the current rezoned land system both encourages hoarding, in anticipation of even greater prices for the land, and also makes housing more expensive, as all costs incurred by a developer, including the price of the overpriced land, are all ultimately passed on to the final purchaser. That is what the land tax and the ability to hoard does to the Irish housing market.
Private hoarding of zoned land for building also causes scattered development, which is bad for good planning and structured development, as builders can only build on whatever land is released to them by these private landowners.
The real solution to the hoarding and selective release of land for building is to remove the ability to hoard land in the first place.
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Rather than rezoning vast tracts of land and allowing the selective and slow release of it, in order to maintain artificially high prices, to the detriment of both planned development and house prices, the system needs to be changed to one of fully planned urban expansion, with any lands required for the next phase of urban expansion purchased through compulsory purchase order (CPO) by the State, released but not sold to the developers and the State recoups its costs, and only its costs, from the final purchaser, removing the speculative element of land in the development process and reducing the price of housing.
Good for the individual, the economy and the State.
The Constitution allows for the purchase of land in the pursuit of the common good, as home owners in the path of the proposed bypass in Galway are finding out.
If actual homes can be bought through compulsory purchase order in pursuit of the common good, why can’t undeveloped land around urban areas also be bought in the same way to facilitate planned urban expansion
It will require some deliberate planning to be put in place beforehand, but that is, I’m sure, well within the capability of the professional planners. – Yours, etc,
DAVID DORAN,
Bagenalstown,
Co Carlow.
