Elderly farmer gives €1.6m plot to Travellers

A bachelor farmer who is giving away land in Co Meath worth €1.6m to the travelling community today said a multi-cultural society would aid the country.

Barney Kearney, 80, revealed he was giving 65 acres of farmland at Corners, Kells, Co Meath to a charitable organisation for Travellers.

It is estimated the land he is donating to the Navan Travellers Workshop is worth around €25,000 an acre, or €1.6m in total.

“There is no difference in my mind between the travelling community and anyone else,” he said.

The farmer, who has nieces and nephews, revealed his neighbours had kicked-up a “shindig” over his announcement.

“Said I to some of them, if I went to their places and told them what to do - what would they say?” he said.

“They will get used it in time. There’s blacks coming from Africa and everywhere. We have to get used to them too. The more people that live together, the better the country could be.”

Mr Kearney said the legal paperwork to transfer the land was not yet completed.

“I’m not going to put all that into the box,” the elderly farmer joked.

He said: “My plan is the land I have here will be for the benefit of the travelling community. It will be under a trustees’ committee.”

A spokesman for the Navan Travellers Workshop has said the land would be held in trust, rather than benefiting one person. The organisation is believed to be considering creating a heritage park to highlight Travellers’ culture.

The group, which has been in place for 40-years, manages a training centre for educational training for Travellers and runs social employment programmes for women. It also runs social education in secondary schools to challenge prejudice around the travelling culture.

The farmer revealed he had first approached a local politician to discuss options for the land but nothing had come out of it.

“I was talking to the North Eastern Health Board maybe five or six years ago,” he said. “They didn’t make a move to do anything either and the land was there.”

Mr Kearney decided the Travellers Workshop was the ideal place to donate his land after hearing of the organisation on the radio or television.

“I went up to Navan to see where I’d get them. I went into the chapel and I said a prayer and I lit a couple of candles,” he said.

After seeking directions from a man at St Mary’s Church in Navan, he said: “All I had to go was out of the Chapel yard and to the left and there was the Navan community. And the man that was there was Michael McDonagh. From that we went ahead. I was talking to his solicitor and one thing or another.”

Mr Kearney said Travellers had always been welcome at his door.

“Even back in the years when they were on the side of the road and they would come across the pathways that they would know and they would come in,” he told RTE Radio. “They’d fill their bellies sitting in the kitchen and they would go off and say: ’God bless you. I will be praying for you’.”