Farm families will meet Fair Deal budget plans with relief

ARECENT article about a land sale in the farming supplement of this paper told an interesting but very real story. A farm was for sale in the midlands – nothing unusual about that, or the fact that the last time it had been sold was in 1970, almost 40 years previously.

Back then, the 56 acres sold for just over £6,000. Taking inflation into account, that £6,000 is worth just under €100,000 today. Today, the plot was being guided at €450,000. When you look at top-line figures like these around farming, you could be led to believe farmers are rolling in it.

And that’s one of the main problems with farming, that such numbers can lend themselves to a false perception of what farmers face.

Last year, the average farm received €17,000 from the EU, which accounted for more than 50pc of the average farm income in Ireland. The number of farmers is dwindling, mainly because it is becoming more and more difficult for the sector to provide a viable income.

A farm worth hundreds of thousands on its own simply doesn’t generate enough cash for many families. And yet those who have families have been faced with crippling nursing home bills over the past number of years as they had to sell part of their land to pay for elderly relatives in care.

These can run to €5,000 a month in many cases and are simply outside the reach of many families.

Under Fair Deal, a person pays 80pc of their total income, such as a pension, to help fund their care and they commit 7.5pc of the value of their assets as a yearly contribution and in the case of the family home, the contribution is capped at three years, or 22.5pc of the value.

However, for farm families that hasn’t been the case – they have been required to set aside 7.5pc of the value of their land annually to fund a place in a nursing home. And with a background of farms struggling to provide a viable income, families faced colossal nursing home bills.

The stress of care bills has been a bugbear for farm families for years.

They haven’t been looking for special treatment, just a realisation of the real facts and figures that they have to deal with on a daily basis.

The 53-acre farm in the midlands, valued at €450,000, might look valuable on paper, but in reality it wouldn’t generate an income anywhere near €5,000 a month.

Taking a possible 7.5pc off this family, based on the value of the land, is an unfair calculation and in many cases would make the farming unit totally unviable.

The expected move in this week’s Budget will see this capped at three years and, in effect, this will give farmland and business assets the same status as the family home.

And it’s far from showing favouritism in any way to farmers around the country. But it should be welcomed by the farming community as it is, at last, demonstrating an understanding of the reality at ground level.