Southern Ireland
Professor Patrick Duffy (March 1998 HIF Conference)
First published at www.cali.co.uk/hif/eire.htm
Irish land is a very important resource to the country both economically and
culturally. Since the 19th century land-ownership has been a central issue in Irish life
and owner occupation of the land an achievement which has had negative and positive
impacts on Irish society. Certainly outright ownership has resulted in a high degree of
resistance to farm restructuring and a persisting problem with unviable farms especially
regionally concentrated in the west of the country. In the western regions especially
there is and has been a strong tradition of family inheritance of the land. In the eastern
regions, in contrast, there has been a greater amount of farm mobility through purchase.
On a very broad scale, the most commercially viable farm units are located in the
eastern and southern regions of the country where the best tillage and grasslands are to
be found. And these regions have benefited considerably from the EU CAP programme. The
poorest land in the western regions - wettest, boggiest, rockiest and most mountainous -
is dominated by the smallest farms. This small farm region also suffers from problems of
remoteness and peripherality and a smaller urban base. However, this 'ecological paradox'
has some positive advantages for tourism, which is the last 20 years or so places a
premium on rural, remoter regions of tranquillity and scenery.
Because of the colonial nature of the landed estates system in Ireland, which in part
contributed to the paradoxical imbalance between land quality and rural farm populations
in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the alienation of the tenant population from the
landowning class, the land problem in Ireland (north and south) became politicised in the
post-famine period. Indeed land reform quickly became entangled with a national struggle
for Home Rule from Westminster. Land agitation put pressure on landowners who were forced
to lower rents, often to uneconomic levels. Indeed many landowners who held out against
the land agitation experienced rent strikes and intimidation: the term 'boycott' typically
originated at this time in the west of Ireland. The consequence was that by the time of
the Land Acts the fight had gone out of the landowning classes (whose political and social
influence had also been greatly eroded at this stage). The Government raised the money to
buy out the landowners under a series of Land Acts from 1886. The farmer occupiers were
given outright ownership and had to repay the loan in the form of annuities which were
less than rents. The Land Commission was the state agency which carried out the process up
to and after the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922.
During the period of political independence the structural legacy of the tenant farms
was fossilised in legislation and government policy. The new state was committed to a
rural fundamentalist policy, especially after De Valera came to power in 1932. The
consequence was that little attempt was made to alter or rationalise the regional
imbalance in farm structures. Indeed in keeping with De Valera's stated aim of
accommodating as many families as possible on the land, the government decidedly favoured
the retention of the small farm structure. Catholic Church social teaching also favoured
this rural policy. From the late thirties until the late sixties, the Land Commission
reflected this policy in its migration schemes: reform and restructuring of the small,
fragmented holdings of less than 20 acres in the West was attempted by 'migrating'
selected farmers to empty country sides in the east. Large grazier farms in counties Meath
and Kildare for example, which were deemed to be under worked and which were often owned
by absentee landowners, were compulsorily acquired by the state and were carved into 25-
35 acre farms for western migrants. In this way hundreds of new small farms were created
in the east of the country - in one area creating a mini 'Gaeltacht' of Irish speakers
from Connemara and Mayo.
From the 1960s, with a switch in national economic policy to encourage inward
investment in industrial development, national rural policy also changed to encourage
restructuring of small holdings. Farm rationalisation was the objective of a range of
national - and from 1973 - EEC policies, all designed to encourage farm consolidation
especially in the small farm regions of the west. Most of these policies were unsuccessful
in encouraging small farmers to surrender ownership. In most cases, the Government's
success in negotiating on behalf of its disadvantaged farmers cut across its
rationalisation policies: qualification for EU grants, such as Smallholders' Assistance,
livestock headage payments and other subsidies designed to assist with the maintenance of
the rural population in the West, conferred continuing benefits on landownership. Thus in
the seventies and eighties while there was a two-thirds reduction in farmers under 50
acres, there was only a 7% decline in holdings. It appears that while many farmers in
western regions were abandoning farming as a full-time occupation, comparatively few were
giving up ownership of their farms.
Although as in the rest of Europe, the gap between small-farm incomes in peripheral
regions and the larger commercial farmers has widened, the Irish experience has shown the
resilience of the small farm communities in the west of the country. Farm income
comparison demonstrates the growing unviability of the small units in the west. But
household incomes demonstrate an apparent social viability in these communities, as
household incomes have converged to a great extent with incomes in the east in the past
couple of decades. Small farm households have diversified their income earning capacity in
line with Government policy. Large numbers have effectively withdrawn from farming as a
primary economic activity. Opting for jobs in industry, in services in local towns or in
rural tourism they have become part-time farmers, often renting out their farms (on the
eleventh month system). And others have survived on state transfers in form of income
supports to disadvantaged areas.
In terms of planning and landscape conservation, the ownership of the land of Ireland
in relatively small units, together with the ideologically favourable position of the
small farmer (at least until the last couple of decades), plus the exempted planning
status for most agricultural developments, plus the positive reaction of rural planners in
the 60s and 70s to the expansion of population in the countryside following on over a
century of continuous decline all resulted in tremendous bottom-up pressure for dispersed
settlement through the countryside. In many cases, this 'ribbon development' is one of the
most notable contrasts with GB's countryside. And I think that while partly reflecting
planning and political laxity, it also reflects the pressure of a densely populated small
farm countryside on planning systems, in contrast to the much larger units in Britain and
Scotland - whether in terms of estates or tenant farms. English rural planning practice of
necessity had to stringently control settlement expansion in the countryside in the face
of extremely large urban populations. (The total population in both parts of Ireland
amount to 5m). Interestingly English planning precedents in place in Northern Ireland had
to be largely abandoned in the late 1970s under pressure from rural residents for a looser
system of development control in the countryside.
The consequence is that many country sides in the Republic especially have been
severely affected by scattered housing. Most Local Authorities have tightened up their
planning controls, but the pressure on them is considerable, and the pressure on local
politicians has meant that Section 4 motions (whereby two-thirds of local councillors can
override the recommendations of the planners) have been quite numerous especially in the
west of Ireland. The positive side of these developments is that in the short term at
least, in parallel with the adverse environmental impact of one-off rural housing, there
has been a significant social renewal of many rural communities. In many places the
countryside is a living entity.
However many parts of the western regions - especially in areas which are not
particularly attractive to outsiders/incomers - there is a constant decline in population.
In these locations there are many empty houses which are still in very good repair. In
order to maintain a level of services, the Rural Resettlement Organisation was set up as a
voluntary body to encourage families who were alienated from suburban living and wished to
move to the countryside. The Organisation aims to rent unoccupied rural houses to families
- generally on unemployment assistance - who are living in rented housing in the cities.
Experience to date has shown it to be a very successful experiment which has served to
maintain enrollments in schools and otherwise enliven demoralising communities.
HIF paper Prof. P J Duffy
