Question: When is a compulsory purchase order not a compulsory purchase order? Answer: When you are a farmer. Compulsory purchase orders are being used, or will be used, in numerous projects across the State. They include the re-development of the Dublin docklands; a facelift for O'Connell Street; the Dublin Port Tunnel; the Corrib gas pipeline, and a redevelopment of Greystones harbour in Wicklow.
They all pale in comparison with the £5 billion (€6.35 billion) national road plan, but in all cases people will lose their land and in some cases their livelihoods as a consequence of the compulsory acquisition of their property.
But it is only the road plan that has been brought to a virtual standstill by the refusal of the people affected by the CPOs to accept the price being offered for their property. It is no coincidence that this is the only plan impinging on the membership of that most powerful of lobby groups, the Irish Farmers Association.
The IFA cannot be faulted for looking out for its members' interests, that is its purpose. As usual, the organisation has pulled out all the stops and is working every angle. This includes pointing out that the CPO is a draconian "British" invention, with all the obvious resonances that statement has with the land wars of the last century. The fact that every democracy in the western world uses them on a routine basis is apparently irrelevant.
The more credible part of their argument is that the normal CPO valuation process does not work in the context of farmland. Under the current system, the whole farm is valued on a per acre basis and the owner is then paid pro rata for the land acquired. It is tough luck if the parts being acquired include a farmer's best field, as inevitably turns out to be the case.
The IFA's tactics are also hard to fault. By refusing to let engineers and other consultants involved in road survey work onto their land, the members have cut the legs from under the road plan, with some projects now nine months behind schedule. If the National Roads Authority cannot carry out surveys, it cannot plan roads and hence, cannot start compulsorily purchasing land. The NRA has the legal power to enter property, but the Government has let it be known that it does not want to see any farmers in Mountjoy over the issue.
What has to be questioned is whether the IFA should be allowed to once again hold the country to ransom over something that affects only 8,000 of its 85,000 members. It is only now that the farmers' actions are having a tangible economic impact. Last week, the Association of Consulting Engineers felt compelled to write to the National Roads Authority and the Minister for the Environment. The organisation - which is not known for hyperbole - has warned that several hundred jobs are at risk if the road projects are delayed any further.
The number of people employed by the association's members has more than doubled to 3,000 in the last few years. Many of these new jobs were the result of firms staffing up in anticipation of the National Road Plan. Some of these people have already lost their jobs and hundreds more will follow, predict the association. When you consider that 8,000 farmers at most are affected by the road building programme, the number of jobs to be sacrificed so that the farmers can once again have their way is significant. If you are one of the people who gave up a good job in the UK, Australia or South Africa to come and work on Irish road projects and now face being laid off, it is beyond comprehension.
The economic impact of the farmers' campaign has yet to really register with the public. Bad and all as the national road network may be, it is the only one we know. It is hard to miss a motorway to Cork if you never had one. Similarly, the various estimates that have been put on the cost to the economy of the delays or the number of people who will die unnecessarily because they are driving on unsafe roads are not very tangible. In many ways these figures have all been grist to the mill of the IFA, while the only human face put on the crisis to date has been that of its members.
This will change when engineering firms start laying off large numbers of people. One would like to think it will provoke the Government to take on the farmers, but that is insanely optimistic. As with most issues involving the powerful farming lobby, the administration's approach is centred on appeasement. The impending general election makes any prospect of farmers being faced down extremely unlikely.
It is a pity, because the signs are that the Government would not only succeed - it would also have significant support from the public at large. Today, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation and the Construction Industry Federation publish their pre-budget submissions. Both stress that with the economy at a crossroads, there can be no delay in the implementation of the plan. It is not to hard to read between the lines.
The courts also seem to have lost patience with the farmers. In January 2000 the IFA was fined £100,000 a day for illegal picketing of meat plants and last October the courts also intervened in the thinly disguised picketing of a milk processing plant by the IFA.
The legal basis of CPOs has been tested and upheld several times in the court. It is designed to prevent exactly the sort of opportunistic profit-making being embarked on by the IFA. Despite this, the Government seems hell bent on capitulation. Officials at the Department of the Environment and elsewhere are bending their mind to come up with a scheme that allows additional payments to the farmers, without opening a Pandora's box in terms of all the other infrastructure projects that depend on CPOs.
It is a fool's errand, but pleasing if you are one of the 8,000 farmers affected. It is not so great if you are one of the 3.5 million other stakeholders in the economy - or just somebody trying to drive to work.
jmcmanus@irish-times.ie
