Sir, – It is interesting that Fianna Fáil politician Darragh O'Brien seems to have learned nothing from the recent election when he suggests giving an unelected official more powers and simultaneously reducing those of democratically elected officials in the area of sale of county council lands ("Fianna Fáil proposes more executive powers for local authority managers", News, March 11th).
Selling council land to private developers is one of the reasons why the housing market is in such a mess at present.
By selling council land for private development, that land, which is often in areas where lower-paid workers are needed for the service industry but cannot afford to buy, is lost to the public forever.
Development of council land should probably be restricted to the development of public housing for rent, both for social housing and long-term security of tenure public rental housing at reasonable rent levels, and for public facilities necessary for decent living.
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It is also interesting to note that in another article ("Rezoning of Dublin city lands for up to 1,900 homes dropped", News, March 10th), residents in Santry managed to get some rezoning halted on the very reasonable grounds (along with others) that while a large increase in population would result because of proposed building plans for the area, no such expansion plans seem to exist for the provision of basic facilities like schools or recreational area to be developed in parallel. Ah sure, won't we build them later!
The rezoning and planning systems are a mess and badly need to be revised.
The planners can only work with the system they have been given and are often forced by the system to allow bad development, while the rezoning system which creates and allows unjustified increases in price (not value) is one of the reasons why modest houses have become so unaffordable. – Yours, etc,
DAVID DORAN,
Bagenalstown,
Co Carlow.