Farmer’s land sold for over €2 million

August 2002

A rags-to-riches farmer and his sister are set to become overnight millionaires after 12 acres of land they own at Rosslare Harbour sold for a staggering €2.1 million.

Wexford auctioneers Michael A. O’Leary and Associates said the €175,000 an acre achieved for the 12-acre site owned by Francis and Kathleen Doyle was either a record, or fairly close to one.

‘I don’t know of €2.1 million being achieved for 12 acres anywhere else,’ said Sinéad O’Leary.

‘It’s great. I wasn’t expecting it to be so high,’ said Mr Doyle, who is in his 70s and who lives at his modest farmhouse near Kilrane with his sister Kathleen.

‘It’s like winning the Lotto,’ he said.

The land, which is zoned residential, has been sold subject to planning permission. It has been owned by the Doyle family for donkeys’s years and before being rezoned for housing two and half years ago, would have been worth around €6,000 per acre.

‘I don’t know what we’ll do with the money, but there’s a lot of things to sort yet. About €100,000 of it will go in Capital Gains Tax and then there are the legal expenses too,’ said Mr Doyle.

Developer Jim Boggan is understood to be planning to build a maximum of 80 houses on the site, which stretches from the main road opposite the GAA pitch at Rosslare Harbour to Ballygillane.

Some years ago, Mr Doyle sold a plot of land to the GAA at Rosslare Harbour for the equivalent of €130.

Mr Doyle, a lifelong bachelor, made no comment about whether his new-found wealth could lead to a queue of prospective Mrs Doyles.