Sir, – Your correspondent Olivia Kelly (News, October 26th) seeks to explain to your readers and, it seems, to local representatives "why rezoning land does not always deliver housing".
It is shocking that anyone is shocked.
As long as we leave it up to the market to meet the social, ie collective need, to change the use of land from (cheap) agricultural/derelict to (more valuable) housing then for so long will we provide easy pickings for unscrupulous middlemen.
Solutions to this dilemma are plentiful and widely used elsewhere. In the 1980s I lived in Sweden where the law was that only land owned by the municipality could be “rezoned”.
The land was acquired at a small premium over agricultural value and was sold, at cost, to builders who submitted the best-value plans.
Would that our legislators were not so in thrall to the property-speculating classes.
– Yours, etc,
KEVIN T RYAN,
Limerick.