Farm abuse-related stress leading to suicides and conflict in every townland in country: Cllr
THE tragedy which claimed the lives of three brothers in north Cork last week took place against a backdrop nationally of farm abuse-related stress and tension leading to suicides in every townland in the country.
So said Cllr Frank Roche, an independent politician who was elected to Cork County Council in 2019 as a result of a campaign in which he highlighted the issues of farm and elder abuse.
Himself homeless due to a dispute which ended in a court case about a family farm, Cllr Roche now lives in a mobile home and is the first port of call for many in the region – and from further afield – who are dealing with stressful family situations around the ownership of the farm.
“I get calls every day from people in different situations – they know that I’ve had my own experiences – and they want to talk to me about what’s happening to them.
“I have 11 contacts on my phone of people who were in difficult farm abuse situations and have taken their own lives in the two months or so since Christmas,” he said. “I heard about another one yesterday.
“There are others I’ve heard about, too, but the ones I’m talking about are all farm related.”
He spoke about farmers in their 50s or early 60s who didn’t own the farms they had been working on all their lives, a parent or both parents were still living and still held the title to the farm.
“They’re all men over 50 and under 65 and the common denominator in most of them is that they’re working the farms, they’ve worked them all their lives, but they don’t own them.
While not referring to any one particular case, nor suggesting any motive for the tragic incidents near Mitchelstown this week, Cllr Roche said: “You’ve an awful problem where elderly people are holding on to these farms and, now, with the way Fair Deal has gone, and the way nursing homes are gone – every nursing home is €1,500-€1,800 a week and some of these were facing mountains of debt or feared being in debt due to having to care for their parents. They [parents] might be in nursing homes where the cost of care is around €1,500 a week – that’s €75,000 to €80,000 for a year; in a year it’s €75,000, in two it’s €150,000, in four it’s up to €300,000. “That’s eating into the farms.” “They could be facing bills for any kind of money after a number of years.”
According to Cllr Roche, the farmers might have added worries as they may have been coaxed to invest in the farm themselves, they might be leasing land and have the worry of paying the lease but having their income drastically reduced or gone entirely and worrying how they will pay the bills.
“Another concern is that the possibility – or what they thought was very likely or certain – that they would inherit the land on the death of their parents is facing a legal challenge from a relative who has been away.”
He said that farms could be worth a million or several million euro in terms of land prices but they weren’t able to generate a sufficient income for the man farming the land and he claimed that some solicitors were prolonging legal disputes over land ownership and title issues to generate legal fees for themselves to the expense of farmers.