Roads body to seek court orders to enter farms

The National Roads Authority will attempt to obtain court orders for access to farmland if farmers refuse to co-operate with its officials, according to its chief executive.

Mr Michael Tobin was reacting to yesterday's "gravely disappointing" move by the Irish Farmers' Association to recommend withdrawal of all co-operation with the compulsory purchase of land for road construction.

Speaking after an emergency meeting of the IFA industrial committee in Abbeyleix yesterday afternoon, the IFA president, Mr Tom Parlon, said all co-operation with the National Roads Programme should stop until there was a "radical increase in the level of payments" made under the compulsory acquisition scheme.

This would involve "not allowing council and NRA officials on to affected farmland to conduct field survey work on roads".

The IFA and the Department of the Environment and Local Government have been in negotiations under the terms of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness on a compensation package for farmers whose land is required by the NRA.

Under the National Roads Programme, which is expected to run until 2006, motorways from Dublin to Belfast and Waterford, and between Galway, Limerick and Cork will be constructed. Roads in the northwest will also be upgraded.

Some 8,000 farmers could be affected by CPOs and although the amount paid depends on the quality of the land, a spokesman for the Department of the Environment and Local Government said the lower end of the scale was £10,000 per acre. In addition to the per acre payments, farmers were entitled to compensation for "disturbance, severance and injurious affection". This could in some cases exceed the amount paid for the land.

The amount paid is assessed under the terms of the Planning Development Act.

The IFA claims farmers are being inadequately compensated. In many cases they are having to wait up to three years before payments are made, during which time the value of land may have risen considerably, it says. It is seeking payments of at least £20,000 per acre.

The Department could not specify how much the compensation would eventually cost.

However, Mr Reg McCabe, director of transport at IBEC, estimated the package demanded by the IFA could result in a bill of £400 million.

Mr Tobin said yesterday's IFA move was "gravely disappointing and a retrograde step."

"I'm certainly not in the business of outright confrontation with the IFA," he said, "but if schemes are held up we will go to court to get orders for access to land."

If the IFA demands were conceded, warned Mr McCabe, there would be a "severe curtailment of the roads programme at an enormous long-term cost to the economy".

Mr Parlon has rejected this, saying farmers must receive "proper financial recognition for the enormous and often devastating impact of road development on their lives and livelihoods".