ICSA president Dermot Kelleher has said that the government needs to fix the mess they have made with the Residential Zoned Land Tax (RZLT) immediately. “This tax is nothing less than a land grab which will destroy family farms that have committed no offence except to farm near cities, towns, and villages. From 1 February2024 landowners, who are in the business of farming not property speculation, are being terrorised with a tax that they can’t possibly afford. This is grossly unfair and must be sorted now.”
“The tax is an ill-thought out, knee-jerk response to a Dublin city problem. It will impose a 3% land value tax every single year in the future. This means that a farmer who has 20 acres of land in the zoned area could face a tax of €60,000 per annum or worse depending on how the land is valued. It is impossible to continue to farm that land and pay such a punitive and unaffordable tax.”
“It is impossible to hold out when after ten years the government will have confiscated at least 30% of the value of the land. In practice, the RZLT will be even more punitive because when the farmer yields to the inevitable and sells up, there will be some vulture who will buy the land at a knock-down price because they know the farmer can’t afford to keep the land. Hence the tax paid by the farmer will be even more than 3% of the value of the land if he or she sells in distressed circumstances at a discount.”
“ICSA is demanding that all farmers who have been farming the land over the past five years are exempted from this tax. We are aware that many of those farmers who have applied to have the land de-zoned have been rejected. This is not acceptable.”
“All these farmers want is to be left alone to farm as they always have. It is not good enough for the government to hide behind county managers and try to evade their responsibility, as has happened in the last week when the Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, wrote to county managers asking them to look again at the de-zoning applications. This is pathetic. The government created the problem, they must fix it. This means that any active farmer who has farmed land for the past five years should be entitled to have the land de-zoned as of right.”
“Aside from the principle of the tax, there are also practical considerations. In some cases, the zoned land is adjacent to a farmyard where slurry and silage odours will make the zoned land unsuitable for large scale housing. We also have an increasing trend of people who object to the noise of farm operations such as calves roaring at weaning time, early morning milking and tractor operations. None of this is properly considered in the rush to provide silver bullet solutions to housing.”
“In addition, some of the areas rezoned are in remote rural areas where the demand for housing development simply doesn’t exist. It just makes no sense and shows how out of touch the government is in imposing this tax outside of Dublin.”
“The debacle shows the danger of Ministers implementing policies without proper consultation with representatives that understand what they are talking about. It is a sad day to see a government introduce a tax which shows scant regard for dearly held property rights in a country where there is a deep historical resonance to land grabs under Cromwell and the long battle over centuries to get the land back in the hands of the local farming people. The RZLT is completely oblivious to this history, and it is urgent that the government admits its mistake and resolves the issue.”
ENDS
