Minister defends price

ONE of Ireland’s highest-ever farmland prices has been defended by Justice Minister Dermot Ahern. The Thornton Hall farm, at Killsallaghan, on the Dublin-Meath border, was purchased early in 2005 as a site for new prison facilities.

The 150-acre site cost €199,000 per acre. It is ten miles from O’Connell Street, near Dublin Airport and major motorways. Minister Ahern said the Government acquired the site for the largest penal complex in the State, not an agricultural farm, and analogies with agricultural investments were not appropriate. He said the €29.9m cost was largely offset by the sale of prison lands at Shanganagh Castle, Co Dublin. “Thus, it was legitimate use of the existing prison stock in order to buy new stock,” Ahern told the Dáil. “If it had been zoned as residential land, it would have been valued at much more, perhaps €1m per acre,” said the minister.