A 56-year-old land grab? Achill families face fresh battle over 400 acres

More than 500 shareholders say they never received compensation after a 1970 compulsory purchase order for the Atlantic-facing commonage

Martin Calvey is one of the owners of the commonage. Picture: Conor McKeown 

There are long memories in the West about land grabs in Cromwellian times. 

Right now, a local government body is attempting a land grab that would have been audacious even by Cromwell’s low standards.

Last Monday, councillors in Mayo were told the council is taking ownership of a large tract of land. 

This comes 56 years after the local authority began the process of acquiring it. 

Whether it has the legal right to do so, and whether it represents an attempt to ride roughshod over the owners, will become apparent in the weeks ahead.

In 1970, Mayo County Council issued a compulsory purchase order (CPO) for a tract of land on Achill Island. 

The owners, numbering 557, mostly farmers, were not fully informed their land was being taken. 

While the order was signed, the process was not completed. 

Neither is there any evidence they were compensated. 

They continued to use the land as they had before, and for over half a century, the council left well enough alone.

Now, the council is taking possession, as if it’s just a matter of turning back the clock a half century. 

Last Monday’s meeting was told a vesting order, which is a process to complete the purchase, would now be sought. 

The Irish Examiner has, over the last two months, published a series of investigative pieces knitting together a strange and startling example of a State body that used its powers in a questionable manner that is now resonating down through the decades.

“It’s the last resort they have,” one of the owners, 86-year-old Martin Calvey says, about the council’s latest move. 

They want to grab it, but I don’t think they will succeed if the people come out and rebel.

The land at issue is a commonage of 400 acres, known as the Sandybanks, looking out on the Atlantic from Keel village. 

The owners are mostly local people who have shares in the commonage. As of now, they are the legal owners, but not for long if the council has its way.

In 1970, Mayo County Council sought to acquire the lands as part of a larger compulsory purchase for infrastructure on the island. 

Three other tracts were subject of the order, all of which were legally transferred to the council. 

But the Sandybanks was not, and the ownership remained with the 557 locals.

According to Mr Calvey, there had been talk of a CPO. 

A meeting was convened in a local hotel, and a resolution formed to resist the purchase. No more was heard about it.

Sandybanks caravan and camping park on Achill Island.

“From my memory, three people were appointed to talk to the council. What I heard back was that they arranged to meet, but the council people didn’t show up. We didn’t hear any more about it.”

A public hearing was held at the time into an objection from a separate owner, John Moran, over the CPO of his private lands. 

At that hearing, according to a transcript seen by the Irish Examiner, the inspector was told there were no objections to the CPO of the Sandybanks. 

This was wholly inaccurate. 

The reality was the landowners were unaware it was going ahead.

Issues over compensation

There are also major issues over any compensation. 

Mayo County Council was told this week something had been set up to compensate the owners but, according to Martin Calvey, nobody received any money, and there is no evidence in the file of anything being paid.

On October 2, 1970, the minister for local government, Bobby Molly, signed off on the CPO. 

The other lands included in the CPO were all taken into possession by the council. The Sandybanks was not. 

Legal title remained with the landowners and still does today in the land registry office.

They continued to graze their animals on the land. 

In 1984, a caravan park was installed on a small portion of the land. 

The operators of the site paid an annual rent to the council for the site, even though the council did not have legal title to the land. 

By this year, the annual rent being charged was €20,000 a year. 

At the same time, a number of the owners, up to 350, were claiming EU subsidies for grazing on the land, which was entirely legitimate as they were the legal owners. 

The current value of the collective subsidy, most of which would be invested in the local economy, is about €4,000 per claimant, for a total between €1m and €1.5m.

In 2004, an issue arose when the council proposed selling four acres of the land to the Western Health Board. 

There was a noisy protest at a council meeting, but the elected members finally voted to go ahead with the sale. Yet it didn’t progress. 

Why that was so has never been established, but had there been an attempt at a sale, it would have emerged the council didn’t actually have title.

A problem arose two years ago when Martin Calvey was denied entry to the caravan park to tend to his animals. 

The caravan park operators understandably wanted control over their business premises, as they saw it. 

As far as Calvey was concerned, he was being denied entry to his own land. 

When the contract for the site was up for renewal in February this year, the elected members of Mayo County Council accepted a motion to have the deeds of title produced to show the council owned the land. 

Nothing happened.

In the wake of the Irish Examiner investigation, things came to a head at last Monday’s council meeting. 

The local councillor for Achill, Paul McNamara, told the meeting that since he was first elected in 2014, any time he brought up issues like wild camping and the management of the lands, he was told the Sandybanks was in private ownership.

“Yet now the information I have uncovered suggests Mayo council itself owns substantial portions of the very lands. 

"So I have to ask, which is it? 

"Are these lands privately owned by the shareholders, as I have repeatedly been told, or are they owned by Mayo County Council?”

The area manager for the council, Seamus Ó Mongáin, confirmed to the meeting the local authority was seeking a vesting order to complete the CPO. 

He said this was being done to provide security of tenure for the caravan park operators.

He only became aware earlier this year that there had been a CPO. 

He told the councillors what he knew of what had happened in 1970.

“The process went through the normal CPO process up to and including a public hearing, and it was my understanding there was one objector at that hearing,” he said. 

This is correct, according to the file seen by the Irish Examiner. 

However, the objector, a John Moran, was not connected to the Sandybanks. 

His objection — with which he was successful — related to a plot owned privately by him in another area of the island.

“It has to all come out,” Mr McNamara told the meeting, according to a report in the Mayo News. 

“The shareholders categorically are of the opinion that they are the owners of that land and commonage. So I have to be the bearer of the news to them today that it appears to be otherwise.”

The caravan park operators, Michael and Lisa Fitzsimons, must now wait to see if their lease can be renewed. 

Lisa Fitzsimons told the Irish Examiner they are finding themselves caught in the middle of the whole thing.

For the owners, the question now is whether, as Martin Calvey has suggested, they fight to keep what is theirs, legally, or allow the council to complete a process that began 56 years ago and has all the appearance of being flawed.