The idea of introducing Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) of farmland for house-building has been described as “highly questionable” by the president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) Pat McCormack.
McCormack’s comments come in response to reports that the Green Party is in talks with Fianna Fáil, in which the adoption of a variant of a recommendation within the Kenny Report (which was compiled as far back as 1973) has apparently been mooted.
McCormack stressed: “The idea of compulsory purchase of farmland for house-building, whereby there would be systematic and deliberate underpayment for the land, was more akin to confiscation than public policy.”
The ICMSA president went on to say that he “could practically guarantee” legal challenges if such an approach was to be implemented.
“We’ve been asked for our opinion on this matter on several occasions before and we’ve pointed out our views.
It seems to us that the housing crisis in Dublin pours the jobs, employers and infrastructure into existing urban and semi-urban locations.
“We’ve pointed out for years that the obvious answer is to put the development and jobs into those areas where the supply of houses outstrips demand and people can buy houses for affordable sums.
“That would involve a degree of long-term planning, as well as admissions of failure that some of our politicians seem unwilling to make,” said McCormack.
That’s why we’re back to this already obsolete and incorrect answer to a question that has moved and changed radically in the decades since it was first advanced.
“Let me make this as clear as the situation demands: You cannot have a situation whereby a local authority or government agency CPOs farmland at a price less than its market value.
“Permitting such a CPO in the first place is an infringement of the landowner’s right not to sell.
“The idea that an arm of the state can force a farmer to sell land and then deliberately underpay them for that land is not public policy – it is arbitrary state confiscation. It would have more in common with dictatorships or thug-states than it would with a democratic state governed by a constitution.
What, for instance, happens where the state CPOs a farmer’s land for housing and systematically underpays him or her, but then concludes the kind of ‘sweetheart’ deal with a private developer that we’ve seen some of the local authorities so controversially do?
The ICMSA president rhetorically asked: “In a situation whereby the farmer has been forced to sell his or her property and then the land is handed over to a private developer for house-building, does the house-builder reduce his or her margin by the same rate as was imposed on the farmer?
“Does the local authority or lending institution reduce its interest rate or rent by the same proportion?
“Because, if that’s not the case and they all keep their margins – as we suspect would happen – then it’s the farmers who are subsidising everyone else in the housing supply chain…in exactly the same way as it’s the farmers who are subsidising everyone else in the food supply chain.”
Concluding, McCormack said: “This is a bad and dangerous idea that is certainly an injustice to individual rights and very probably illegal. I would guarantee a succession of legal challenges.”