Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the Labour Party amendments and her comments in introducing them. I agree with her wholeheartedly on uplift and Kenny-style measures. That is why we are bringing forward the land value sharing, LVS, Bill. The Deputy asked me about that in the Dáil. The LVS Bill will soon be available for publication. It is undergoing final checks in the Attorney General's office. That the State will be able to capture part of the uplift in value of a site due to rezoning is a long-overdue measure that needs to be taken. We put a lot of work into that Bill. I expect its publication to be imminent. It is to be hoped it will be published in advance of Report Stage on this Bill. I am committed to doing it and have Government approval to do so. This will be in addition to Part V, which I have changed, as the Deputy knows, by adding 10% affordable to the 10% social. The LVS Bill will enable a further capture of between 20% and 30% of the uplift of the value to be retained by the State to provide the services and amenities we need. That Bill will be published imminently. I am not disagreeing with anything the Deputy said. I am not in a position to accept her amendments at this stage. They will be in the LVS Bill.

I will turn to the CPO piece. All of us want to make sure that is better. I will make a general point about local authorities purchasing land. Last year and again this year, I brought forward the land acquisition fund for local authorities. We spent approximately €98 million last year on that, or maybe a little more. We also have an allocation for this year. Local authorities are buying land. They are now buying through the Department facilitated by the Housing Agency. It has gone very well. I also removed debt from local authorities that had previously purchased land that was encumbered with legacy debt. There were quite a significant number of such sites - more than 30. We took that debt off local authorities on the basis that they deliver additional social housing and that it is done using modern methods of construction, MMC. The first three sites are in preparation in that regard.

Some local authorities use this, and the threat of it, effectively. In many instances there is no need to go down the full route because the threat of using a CPO actually activates a property. Even on a non-CPO basis, we have seen the success of the vacancy grant. There is a great demand as well for people to take old properties back into use. Some local authorities do this well.

In the context of CPOs, I must oppose the provisions the Deputy put forward in the Labour Party's amendments. I am not saying we are not going to change anything, but these would, in effect, add a compensation procedure for land that is subject to a CPO. I know this is not the intent of the amendments, but it would do this. As I previously informed the committee - we had a good discussion on the matter, and the Deputy alluded to this point as well - provisions relating to CPOs in Part 14 are largely aligned with those in the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended. The Law Reform Commission's report, to which many of the amendments from the Labour Party refer, was published in 2023 while the Bill was being drafted. Given the complexity of this matter in particular, the Government agreed - I brought a memo to Cabinet on this - that it would be prudent not to update the provisions relating to CPOs as set out in the 2000 Act but to review them in conjunction with the commission's report. As such, any future reform of compulsory acquisition provisions will take account of the recently published report of the Law Reform Commission.

I am not saying that I am opposed to the Deputy amendments, but I am not proposing to accept them on this Stage. We wish to get this Bill passed as it stands and allow the review of the Law Reform Commission's report on CPOs to take place. This was four to five years in coming forward, as the Deputy knows.