Selling school lands to private developers: should the state be forced to buy them?

riffmongous wrote: »

Stealing? We should be worried about stealing from a group who committed mass child abuse and conspired to cover it up? These groups are lucky they weren't all nationalised and banned from having any presence in the country after what they did.

The problem with your analogy and the reason for this thread is they are raising the funds by selling off land that is being used by the State and the State is funding, so even if the land is worth more to the developer the State will still have to provide extra funding to make up for the lost land, that's why it's underhanded and just another **** you to the people from so-called religious groups without a shred of decency.

That's awful shite that you're coming out with in fairness. Completely irrelevant.

Property rights are enshrined in the constitution. Whether or not you hate Catholics does not give you the right to steal their land on your own whim. If the state wants to buy the land, let them buy it at the market rate. If the Church sells it to someone else for lower then that's their own loss as they'll still owe the state money (which would keep some people happy as they'd have something to whinge about).

Who else's property rights would you like to extinguish? GAA/FAI/IABA/Athletics-Ireland? Because they all provide facilities in areas where the state has been found wanting.

You forgot to mention Bankers while you were at it. And the 1% elites. Rabble rabble.

KyussBeeshop wrote: »

Because we didn't give the church a slice of our public parks and vital greenspace, to turn what was supposed to be a sports ground or similar community/school amenity, into a bloody residential development!

Not every slice of greenspace in Dublin is up for grabs you know - just because a corrupt institution pulled enough strings, passed enough backhanders, to corruptly get their special non-residential land zoning, rewritten to allow residential development - so they could resell land they were sold for a pittance (practically given...) by the state, for bloody millions in private profit, on land that should be owned by public parks or otherwise by the public/local-community...

You do realize that towns and houses haven't been there since time immemorial?

KyussBeeshop wrote: »

Fuck anyone, who tries to abuse the zoning laws to turn what was supposed to be non-residential land (the way the zoning was originally written...), into residential land - including land right in the middle of parks in Dublin, that was never supposed to become residential - anyone investing in that I will happily see fucked, by the zoning laws being returned to what they were in the past.

The residential zoning of these lands was gained through church lobbying and corrupt interaction between the church and state - whoever invests in that can get fucked - the public should not be the ones to lose out once again, because of state/church/property-development corruption (with the developers today, being allowed massive gains from developing this corruptly gained land) - the land zoning designation can easily be rewritten, to prohibit residential development.

If any land is left that is suitable for residential redevelopment - then they can apply for rezoning - the way it should have been in the first place.

Sorry. If we had known about your situation we would not have asked you questions

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

If they're owned by the Church? Yes. The Magdalene Laundries workers were effectively slaves.

Well get on the case there right away Sherlock Holmes. All you need to do is trace the proceeds of the profit from the laundries to the purchase of that piece of land and then prove that those profits were from illegal activities and you have the case solved.

The other guy KyussBeeshop seems to think "we" gave them the land. Which would rule out them being obtained through crime.

riffmongous wrote: »

Spewing out the shíte there yourself, the old anti-catholic card, great, I might as well call you a paedo lover if that's the level you want to post at :rolleyes:

I'm very far from anti-catholic, and have plenty of respect for the good priests, but I think the redress payouts are a disgrace and a sick indictment of the organisations that are more concerned with covering their own asses than any actual penitence

One of my friends is black eh?

I assume that the church are not unilaterally setting the values of the payouts. So if you have issue with the payouts, whether you think they are too little or too much, you should address it to those responsible

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

They did with John Gilligan - I'm sure a well motivated team could seize an awful lot of Church property given the resources and political will.

Must have been a lot of money in washing sheets. A lot, if not most of, the Churches land was bequeathed to them. Also, property cannot be seized based on "political will". That would be a frankly dangerous and nonsense suggestion.

Do you not think it's justified that the Church should pay its many victims compensation?

Did anyone suggest otherwise? The thread is not about that. Some people in some area found out that the church is selling part of its property that its school currently has use of. So some southside dubliners are getting their knickers in a twist. But it's a bit of a leap to imply "hey hold on a minute there. A lot of priests abused kids and did terrible things in the past. So those poor southsiders should be given the ownership of large school grounds for free".

Let the church sell the property and hand the money over to the victims. Not to the locals of that school. The state, or any other group or individual is free to purchase and let the school continue to use it.

A secondary school not too far from me had a lovely full sized GAA pitch right beside it. You just walked out the side door and there was just wide open grass. I moved away for a few years. When I went past it a few years later I noticed that apartments were built on about half of the pitch. I asked someone about it and they told me that the school never actually owned the pitch. A developer had owned it but just let them use it for about 20 years (or maybe it had passed through a string of developers). On one hand that sounds crappy, but on the other hand they had the use of it for probably next to nothing for 20 years

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

So what?

Criminal assets bureau is to confiscate the proceeds of crime. If for some reason Dolores McNamara leaves you 100m Euro in her will and you are the biggest cunt in Ireland and you go around causing trouble and getting fines, the CAB can't come and confiscate your 100m. It isn't the proceeds of crime. If you go through the courts and get a judgement registered against you then then you can be pursued that way. Nothing to do with CAB.

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

It's perverse that the rights of criminal property-owners supercede the rights of survivors of thier terrible crimes to compensation.

Hmmm. I thought that the story was that they were selling these assets to get money. That money can be used to compensate victims.

The nub of the matter is that the public get a lot of use and benefit from church assets such as schools and pitches. If people scream that these assets have to be sold to pay victims, then they can't complain when they are sold.

It's a kind of NIMBYism. "Bastard church should sell all their lands.....except for the ones that we use and have the benefit of. They shouldn't sell those".

Church has property. Victims need to be paid. Church needs to sell some of their property and give them the money.

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

More's the pity. Could someone come after me in the civil courts if I was, say, involved in moving peadophiles around to protect them from accusations while ensuring there'd be more children raped and assaulted as a result?

Yes. Probably. And if you had property or assets then they could be taken off you by the courts regardless of how you came to own them.

If somehow or other you obtained those assets as a result of your criminal activities - say you were getting paid to move those paedos around , and you couldn't show any evidence of how you could have gotten that money by legal means, then the CAB could probably seize them as the proceeds of crime. But CAB don't enforce general court awards