Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) president Pat McCormack says farmland ownership should not be used as a tax shelter. This comes after former attorney general and tánaiste Michael McDowell said that the “super-wealthy” were building portfolios of tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land “simply as long-term stores of value”.
According to McDowell, the phenomenon appears to be “reversing” what was a key national aim and social policy for a century.
Commenting on the matter, McDowell says it raised a fundamental question as to whether the independent Irish state is simply to permit Irish agriculture to revert after a century and a half to a landlord-tenant sector where the rich and powerful own the land and farmers toil to pay them rent.
ICMSA president, Pat McCormack has supported Mr McDowells sentiments saying that he has raised general and specific points that will need to be addressed shortly. “We have always felt that farmland was not just a kind of ‘capital asset’ in the manner of bullion or shares or, even in these times, crypto,” he says.
Sharing his reservations on the matter, McCormack says that seeing very high net worth individuals or corporations increasingly regarding ownership of farmland as just another option in their investment portfolios is quite concerning.
McCormack adds that the ICMSA is a farmer organisation, and its view is that it’s much more desirable, and beneficial to society, to have prime farmland owned by farmers who will work sustainably and produce food off that. He says tax law and CAP must reflect who it is that we want to own farmland.