Michael Brady.
Agricultural Consultant and managing director at Brady Group: Agricultural Consultants & Land Agents.
The Irish Land Commission was created by the British crown in 1843. Its purpose was to inquire into the occupation of land in Ireland. It was based in Dublin Castle, all the land ownership records were stored in the records tower there. For a century it was the body responsible for re-distributing farmland in most of Ireland. It was formally abolished in 1999.
Of late there have been calls for the re-introduction of the Land Commission or a similar body to control the sale and purchase of land in Ireland. This is because of recent headline land purchases by high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors at the expense of local farmers.
Land ownership in Ireland has a rich and complex history, shaped by centuries of social, economic, and political change.
In the Pre-Famine Era early-mid 1800’s, land ownership was predominantly in the hands of a small number of landlord families. In the 1780’s around 5,000 landlord families owned over 95% of all productive land. The majority of the population were tenants with little or no access to land ownership. This system created a significant disparity between the wealthy landowners and the impoverished tenant farmers.
The Great Famine occurred between 1845 – 1852, it had a profound impact on land ownership in Ireland. The mass emigration and death toll reduced the population significantly, leading to changes in land use and ownership. Many landlords faced financial difficulties and were forced to sell their estates. This period saw the beginning of a shift towards more widespread land ownership among the Irish population.
In 1879 The Land War commenced where there was significant agitation and unrest in respect of farming and land ownership structure in Ireland. Tenant farmers demanded fair rents, fixity of tenure, and free sale of their interests in the land. This movement led to a series of Land Acts, which gradually transferred ownership from landlords to tenants. The most notable of these acts was the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, which provided government loans to tenants to buy their holdings from landlords. By the early 1900’s a significant portion of Irish land had been transferred to tenant ownership.
Also significant was the Land Act of 1923, which established the Land Commission I the new state, its function was to transfer the ownership of the remaining large estates to smallholders. In the following decade it re-distributed 450,000 acres.
This history has shaped the present-day position where land ownership in Ireland is primarily freehold, owned by local landowners who farm the land.
Ireland has an estimated 17million areas of land of which approximately 11 million acres are suitable for agriculture and forestry. So, who owns this land?
The largest landowner in Ireland is the state itself. Semi-State agencies such as Coillte, Bord Na Mona, OPW, Nama, Teagasc, IDA and the Land Development Agency combined are estimated to own up to 1.5 million acres or 9pc of the land area in the country.
The Catholic Church through all its combined congregations is another significant landowner in the state. The total acreage is unknown but is most certainly decreasing as the various communities exit farming operations and land is sold to fund other matters.
Much of the recent publicity around land purchase has been focused on high net-worth individuals and families buying land in Ireland. Land purchased by the Magnier Family of Coolmore Stud in Tipperary and beef baron Larry Goodman in Co. Louth are just two examples who feature regularly for land purchases. Whereas this may increase the price paid for land locally in those areas, the amount of the land owned by such individuals is miniscule on a national scale being significantly less than 1pc.
Accumulation of land by purchase in Ireland is very difficult in any case due to small volume offered for sale annually, but when individual buyers dominate the land market in a particular area, it polarises opinion when local farmers find it impossible to compete. However, it does beg the question if a foreign investor was accumulating land by purchase in Ireland would policy and legislation around land purchase be changed? Such laws are common in developing countries where a local must be involved in the ownership of land.
Corporate agriculture is a significant land purchaser on a global scale, bringing much needed capital into areas where smaller local landowners struggle to raise finance to invest. This presently is not a factor in Irish land sales as the return on investment is too low for the corporates. In my opinion, corporate agriculture is a much bigger long term threat as a potential competitor to local purchasers of land in Ireland. The corporate funds have the financial power to purchase all aspects of an enterprise from food production to processing and marketing. This is the space to legislate if deemed necessary in the future.
In summary, the facts of the matter are that genuine local farmers are still the main drivers of buying land in Ireland. Success as a farmer is measured by how much land you have purchased in your lifetime and success as a non-farmer is often judged by the land holding you have acquired to be your home. It is difficult to see any immediate threat to this situation in the short to medium term.