Landowners subjected to divide-and-conquer tactics in presentation of route options

THERE is great concern at the way new bypass roads and motorways are being introduced. The system is dividing communities and parishes and is turning them against each other.

When three or four road development options are published there is a tug-of-war between communities over the plans.

In that way, neighbours are set against one another. Farmers whose land is compulsorily taken should have a share in the tolls, even if it is a small percentage, in order to compensate for the loss of their land. In that way, one could bring people along with the plan instead of driving them against it. There should be consultation with people instead of publishing details of four routes and then coming up with what they call “an emergency preferred route”.

That, in my opinion, is not consultation. Rather it is going out to the communities and saying they intend to make a new road between Midleton and Youghal or wherever, so let’s talk about it and see how it could be done”.

Little attention is paid to the destruction of family farms. The NRA and An Bord Pleanála are not answerable to Dáil Eireann, and that’s a serious issue.

What about the farming families who for generations have owned land that will now benefit tens of thousands of motorists? They will only receive peanuts for their land. The situation is inequitable and farmers are being insulted by the small sums on offer for their land.

Like a lot of other policies, we inherited this system also from the old British model which advocated a policy of divide-and-conquer.

In the end, 70% of people will be happy, but no one will be prepared to fight the cause of the 30% through whose lands motorways will run. It is impossible for many farmers affected by a roads programme to purchase land to replace whatever has been compulsorily acquired. They are not able to find land within a reasonable distance of their existing farms at a price to match the amount of compensation they are paid for compulsory acquisition.

There is an unanswerable case for compensation for compulsary purchase orders to be completely free of capital gains tax, whatever use the recipient makes of it.

Cllr Noel Collins

‘St Jude’s’

Midleton

Co Cork