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Joe Mulhall, Shane Phelan and Alex Wilsdon are farmers locked in a battle with Kilkenny County Council, who have ruled that land they own is subject to the vacant site levy.
Mulhall and Phelan are facing being billed for 3% of the value of their farmland on 1 January 2019. The valuation will be determined by an independent valuer, employed by and paid for by the local authority. The levy will be 7% in the second year.
None of these farmers ever sought planning for any of these fields or tried to sell them. None of these fields was ever subject to an offer from a developer or from the local authority either.
The only thing that differentiates these fields from any others is that they were included in an area that was zoned for development, an act that at the time seemed to have no consequences, for good or ill, for the landowners.
They point to sites all over Kilkenny city that are truly “vacant and idle”; some derelict, many overgrown, abandoned half-developed sites. Many are fully serviced, some even have roadways built through them. At least one is owned by NAMA. None of the those sites is currently deemed to be subject to the site tax.
“Kilkenny County Council seems to see no distinction between a site that is overgrown and an eyesore, and a field of corn or cattle,” says Joe Mulhall.
The IFA was meeting Kilkenny County Council on Wednesday afternoon.
IFA president Joe Healy described the levy being imposed on farmland as “tantamount to extortion”.
“The IFA cannot and will not accept a situation where farmers whose land has been zoned are effectively forced to sell or develop it to avoid this punitive tax. Our members are very anxious that the matter is addressed immediately to remove the application of the levy to farmland.”
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