Brendan Burgess
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A great article. It seems so obvious, yet so difficult to overcome the vested interests.
How to solve the housing crisis
Current planning policy must be abandoned if we want to end the crisis of rocketing property prices and rents
But Dublin is a pretty small city in reality, with a population in the city and county combined of just over 1.3 million. There are close on 100 bigger cities in China alone, and more importantly, dozens around Europe of similar size which manage to deliver affordable housing for citizens.
Current policy, starting with the 1963 Planning Act and its successors, should be abandoned. All unused and under-utilised land, including land currently zoned for agriculture or for ''amenity'', whatever that means, inside 10 or 15 miles of the M50 (and within it!) should be declared available for residential development, subject to planning permission. This would bring a guaranteed end to re-zoning controversies and the associated corruption. More importantly, it would solve the problem of how to capture for the State the so-called ''planning gain'' when low-value land is suddenly raised in value by fiat, by the simple expedient of eliminating the planning gain. Land prices would be driven back towards agricultural value. The current obsession with mobilising only land in the ownership of State agencies is an evasion - most of the derelict land in and around Dublin does not belong to the State.