Gormley to take tough line in talks with FF

GREEN PARTY:A TOUGH bargaining position in the renegotiation of the programme for government was signalled by Green Party leader John Gormley in the Dáil yesterday.

During the resumed National Asset Management Agency (Nama) legislation debate, Mr Gormley warned that “the new planning legislation and the new programme for government will be transformational in nature. Indeed, they will be accepted by the Green Party membership only if that is so.”

The Minister for the Environment also hit out at the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) and its director general Tom Parlon who had earlier criticised the “social dividend” provisions the Greens seek for Nama. “I have one message for Mr Parlon and his people: ‘Please, keep your noses out of Nama’,” he said.

And he claimed the powersharing agreement between Fine Gael and Labour on a number of local authorities “brought with it some of the most irresponsible planning this country has ever seen”.

In many towns and cities “councillors have zoned so much land that they will be long dead before it is used up”. He said “the Green Party will clean up the mess this type of reckless rezoning behaviour has brought with it and break the cosy councillor- developer cartel once and for all”.

Profit “without social dividend is what created this property bubble. Developers lived high on the hog from charging astronomical prices for sites for schools and other social infrastructure.”

It was “essential that there is a social dividend to Nama and that there is a first-refusal mechanism on Nama assets for social projects, from schools to hospitals and community facilities. This morning, Tom Parlon and members of the Construction Industry Federation were on Morning Ireland complaining about this and claiming that Nama would be ‘hog-tied’ by such a provision.”

Warning them to “keep your noses out of Nama”, he said: “It is for the Government and members of this House, of all parties, to decide on how Nama and related planning reforms will work”.

Mr Gormley, who said he has no shares in companies or banks, believed Nama “is the least worst option” and if Fine Gael and Labour got into government in the next number of weeks, they would introduce the Nama legislation.

Insisting that “our banking and property problems cannot be fixed unless we address our planning problems”, he said “it is no coincidence that our commuter towns are now suffering most from the economic downturn”.

Mullingar was chosen for the Opposition’s Mullingar Accord because of the powersharing agreement on Westmeath County Council. “Did this agreement bring with it a new type of politics to Co Westmeath? Did people come before the profits of banks and land speculators? Not one bit of it.”

It “resulted in enough land being zoned in Athlone to last for 60 years of boom building – until 2069 to be precise. Did the Mullingar Accord bring a fair deal to the people of Westmeath or the families who moved to the county, paying huge prices for their new homes? The scale of the problem is now becoming apparent.

“Athlone is the tip of an overzoning iceberg” and “sufficient land has been zoned to accommodate houses for an additional 1.7 million people. That is a staggering amount of over-zoning.” The Green Party will clean up the mess this type of reckless rezoning behaviour has brought with it and break the cosy councillor-developer cartel once and for all, Mr Gormley said.

“We will rid our council chambers of the wink and elbow language of developers and their puppet councillors.”