The average price of agricultural land rose by 20.1 per cent in the third quarter of last year, according to figures is sued by the Central Statistics Office.
Preliminary figures for July-September last year indicated that the average price paid for land in the period was £3,861 an acre. This was 20.1 per cent above the second quarter of 1999 and 30.6 per cent over the third quarter of 1998.
The average land transaction size in the period under review was just over 45 acres, which represented a 4.7 per cent decrease over the previous quarter in 1999.
The CSO said allowance should be made for the fact that only a small amount of land was sold on the open market each year and the number and value of agricultural land sales recorded by it did not fully reflect the total activity in the market.
It said that about 25 per cent of transactions were excluded in the figures for the first three quarters of 1999 because of lack of sales details. Transactions outside the range of £162 an acre and £10,117 an acre were excluded on the basis that the purchaser may intend to use the land for non-agricultural purposes or that a non-market element may have been involved in the transaction.
The figures also excluded transactions in Dublin because of the uncertainty about whether the land would continue to be used for agricultural purposes.
Similarly, transactions under 8.4 acres were excluded. Taken with the other excluded areas, these sales accounted for 15 per cent of transactions.
"In interpreting the figures, allowance should be made for the fact that only a small amount of agricultural land is sold on the open market each year.
"For example, the 1997 transactions covered by the figures account for only 0.3 per cent of the area farmed nationally in that year. There are wide variations in selling prices arising from differences in the quality of the land, its location and other local factors as well as market forces such as changing agricultural policy, inflation and the demand for land," it concluded.