Farmers in Co Clare are being subjected to a land racket that involves intimidation and fear, a TD in the county has claimed.

Several farmers in the county have had their land effectively occupied by unauthorised people, who put horses and ponies on the land to graze and change the locks on gates without the landowners’ permission, the Fianna Fáil TD told the Irish Farmers Journal.

However, the horse owners are not the real instigators of the problem, he claimed, but are being solicited to do this by other farmers.

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“It has happened in several parts of Co Clare,” the TD told the Irish Farmers Journal, who said the practice typically occurs when land is about to come up for sale or, in some circumstances, when the landowner is vulnerable in some way, either through ill health or old age.

With the land being effectively squatted on by “a pretty rough clientele”, the end result is that the land is devalued and any potential buyers are put off, leaving the way open for the architects of the plan to buy the land at knockdown prices, far below its true market value.

Deputy Crowe, who is a suckler farmer himself, said he was particularly horrified to learn that the people accused of setting up the racket are farmers themselves.

Reprehensible

Speaking on social media on Tuesday, the TD said: “The whole tactic here is to try to intimidate the legal owner of the land, to try to force a sale… to try to drive the price down. I think that's reprehensible.”

“Farmers went to prison over the years, standing up for each other and fighting for the rights to have land and to own it without conditions and it's absolutely reprehensible that farmers will be using this tactic to try to frustrate sales, to drive down prices,” he said.

He called on any farmers affected to report it to the gardaí.

“I'm a politician and it's useful for me to hear these things, but I have no investigative or enforcement capacity whatsoever. You need to go to the guards,” he urged.

Crowe told the Irish Farmers Journal that he would not name or identify any of the alleged accused instigators, but on social media he added: “Taking off my political hat and putting on my farmer's hat. I know when I'm at the mart, when I'm trying to get some replacement heifers here for my farm, I won’t be buying from people who are employing that tactic in their locality. I think it's absolutely reprehensible.”

He said he believed that the practice was happening outside of Co Clare too.

“It's not nice, it's not neighbourly, it's not in the spirit of meitheal, it's illegal. And please report it,” he urged farmers affected.