Farmers have seen actively farmed land added to the new vacant site register, making them liable to pay a levy worth 3% of its value at the end of this year and 7% in following years.

Kilkenny IFA chair James Murphy told the Irish Farmers Journal that a Christmas tree crop was among fields liable to pay the levy after Kilkenny County Council zoned the land residential without the farmer requesting it.

A spokesperson for the council confirmed that two of the 29 sites on the county’s register were currently in agricultural use.

The spokesperson added that this was in accordance with Government policy: “The purpose of the levy is primarily to facilitate the provision of housing, and in this context therefore the guidance given to local authorities is that the levy should be applied including in cases where the land is being put to agricultural use,” they said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing, Planning and local Development confirmed this to the Irish Farmers Journal.

A 2016 Department circular on the implementation of the levy states that “pending development appropriate to its zoning, the land may currently or on an interim basis have an agricultural use ... in such cases the levy may be applied”.

A number of farmers in this situation have appealed to An Bord Pleanála. IFA farm business chair Martin Stapleton told the Irish Farmers Journal: “It would be completely unacceptable that land used by a family farm would be subject to the vacant site levy”.