Two senior trade union leaders have called on the Government tonight to intensify efforts to halt the spiralling cost of accommodation. The calls have come from SIPTU President, Des Geraghty, and from the President of the Public Service Executive Union, Tom Allen, at the opening of the union's annual conference in Tralee.
Under the terms of the new national agreement, Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, a special Forum is to be set up to look at the increasing cost of housing and ways in which it can be brought under control. At the annual conference of the Public Service Executive Union today, its President, Tom Allen, said that the aim of trade union representatives at that Forum should be to look at ways of increasing the housing supply, thereby bringing prices down.
It was totally unacceptable, he said, that modest accommodation should be beyond the means of ordinary people. At the same time, SIPTU President said that the price of building land bore no relation to any cost or to any legitimate entitlement to those who owned and controlled it. Des Geraghty argued that there was now a clear case for the suspension of trading in building land in the public interest on the basis that the current monopoly control of development land was totally distorting the market.
