Landowners hold State to ransom: Time to act on ’73 land report

Dramatists have been well served by The Irish Mother. That beloved figure offers a character to show how values change. The Irish Mother praying that a wayward child — as in a lapsed Catholic — might re-embrace religion is not unfamiliar to theatregoers. This is just one way that we show that the answer to the future may lie in the past.

Last September, when he disinterred the 1973 Kenny Report which proposed capping the price of development land, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin turned to the past to resolve one of today’s and tomorrow’s most pressing problems. Kenny recommended that development land should be compulsorily acquired by local authorities at farm value plus 25%. Mr Martin’s reference could hardly be described as impetuous, but Kenny’s report is more relevant than ever.