Sinn Féin has warned that the land ownership trends witnessed in Co Leitrim over recent decades could be soon replicated in regions of prime agricultural land as the “very, very wealthy” are snapping up vast tracts of farmland to avoid inheritance tax.

The warning comes just months after the Government’s own tax strategy group assessed whether new laws limiting farmland purchases solely to farmers could be a runner to prevent non-farmers from benefitting from agricultural tax reliefs.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald TD told the Irish Farmers Journal that there are a number of options available to Government to clamp down on non-farmers’ exploitation of farmland inheritance tax reliefs and that the State’s tax advisers should lead a reform push.

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“The idea of the agricultural disregard is to assist people in farming and farming families,” McDonald said at the 2026 National Ploughing Championships in Screggan, Co Offaly, on Tuesday.

“The intention of it was never to be a vehicle for very, very wealthy people to avoid a tax liability and there seems to be ample evidence that that is the case.

“What we need to figure out is what the tax reform looks like, which allows for still the legitimate use of that disregard but ends the exploitation that that we're witnessing."

McDonald suggested that mechanisms such as “fairly robust appeals procedures” can avoid inadvertently shutting genuine families out of the reliefs put in place to facilitate farm transfers.

“There's ways that you can handle it, but this is something there isn't a snap answer to that question except to say that we recognise it as an issue and that that loophole does have to be shut down and Government now needs to go and seek the expertise on that.”

The Leitrim experience

Sinn Féin’s agriculture spokesperson Martin Kenny – a TD for Sligo-Leitrim – said that farmers need not look further than Leitrim to understand where non-farmer land interests emerged to at scale.

“It began many, many years ago in the forestry sector, that's where we'd have seen it most in Co Leitrim, where a piece of land would come up for sale beside farmers, but they can't afford to buy it because some investment company comes and buys it,” Deputy Kenny told the Irish Farmers Journal.

The TD said these investors were initially coaxed by grants covering the costs of establishing forestry and the tax-free annual premiums funded by the Department of Agriculture, but that the lure of avoiding inheritance tax only compounded the interest such deals were attracting from wealthy non-farmers and investment funds.

“All of these things were put in place in fairness to assist farmers to get into forestry, but it was exploited by other businesses, who seen it as very lucrative and done so,” Deputy Kenny continued.

“Now we see all over the country where people who have done very well in whatever sector they're in and they want to leave money to their children, rather than having the tax liability that accounts for, they buy land and use the transfer of the wealth through the land.

“There needs to be a mechanism put in place to ensure that that cannot happen any longer.”