Irish Rural Link Annual Conference: A new survey reveals a high level of home ownership in rural Ireland.
Ninety-eight per cent of farmers own their own homes, while 99 per cent of rural-based business people are home-owners, the study by NUI Maynooth, NUI Galway, University College Dublin and University College Cork shows.
It also finds that farmers and retired people have the lowest number of mortgages.
A total of 22 per cent of farmers and 11 per cent of retired people had mortgages, while 51 per cent of business people and 60 per cent of employees had mortgages on their homes.
Preliminary details of the study, the most comprehensive ever undertaken of rural Ireland, were announced yesterday at the Irish Rural Link Annual Conference in Portumna, Co Galway.
It shows that farmers are more convinced than other rural dwellers that houses in their areas should be for locals only, with 57 per cent supporting the idea.
Some 47 per cent of rural-based business people supported the notion, while 43 per cent of employees and 48 per cent of retired or unemployed rural dwellers were of the same view.
Prof Jim Phelan of University College Dublin said the NUI Rural Household Survey had accumulated huge amounts of information on rural households including on attitudes towards housing.
He said it would be later in the year before all the information was intrepeted. A total of 1,258 homes were involved in the survey.
Prof Phelan said the low level of mortgage did not reflect the quality of homes, and this had been shown when the survey had sought information on whether or not homes had double glazing.
"We have found that 67 per cent of farming homes have double glazing compared to 88 per cent of business people and 82 per cent of employees. The figure dropped to 57 per cent for retired and unemployed people," he said.
Six per cent of retired and unemployed people had no bathroom in their homes, and 4 per cent of farming homes. All the homes of business people had bathrooms, and only 1 per cent of employee homes lacked the facility.
Business people living in rural Ireland owned most computers, with 76 per cent of respondents owning one. There were computers in 50 per cent of farm homes, in 65 per cent of the homes of employees and 25 per cent ownership in the homes of retired and unemployed people.
Rural business people had the highest mobile-phone ownership at 95 per cent, followed by employees at 93 per cent. A total of 75 per cent of farmers owned mobile phones and 48 per cent of retired or unemployed people.
Prof Phelan said the most frightening finding of the survey was that in rural farm households the level of income derived from the market had dropped to 14 per cent, with the remainder coming from direct payments or other State transfers or from other sources.
Prof Michael Cuddy, of NUI Galway, said rural Ireland had developed a two-tier system of rural development with areas closest to cities, which drove development, doing quite well, while there were serious income problems in the more remote areas.
He said that traditionally money from the Common Agricultural Policy went directly into farming and not into rural development. That would have to change, and realistic rural development objectives would have to be set.