INTRODUCTION

WHO OWNS IRELAND?

Land and property ownership have had a deep impact on Irish history and, arguably, its psyche. This was emphasised by the schooling many of us experienced growing up, with its focus on how British rule led to a denial of many rights to the Irish, particularly those of the Catholic faith, and especially to own our land. The landlord–tenant relationship was central to what we learnt about the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century, the belief that essentially foreign landlords – even if born on this island because they professed to British nationality – had kept or sold the food that the general population needed. They were able to do so because they had confiscated the land and allowed only minimal holdings to the native population, for which they charged excessive rent. We had become tenants in our own land.

The late nineteenth-century rise in nationalism – and the early twentieth-century revolution that led to our independence from British rule – can be traced in large part to the formation of the Irish National Land League, Conradh na Talún, and what became known as the Land War, with the Catholic Church to the forefront of organising a political movement. The term ‘rack-rent’ became synonymous with excessive charges to tenants and evictions of those unable to pay; it became a hated feature of what was seen as British-enforced law on behalf of landlords. Land League co-founder Michael Davitt’s slogan of ‘The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland’ went into folklore. Resistance to evictions was organised, leading sometimes to violence. The twenty-first-century distaste in Ireland for evictions has its roots here.

The aspirations of the 1916 rebellion, as set out in the Proclamation of Independence, declare ‘the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland’ and add in the same sentence ‘to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished theright …’ The Proclamation continues to assert the right to control but nowhere does it adequately offer a definition as to how the ownership of Ireland’s land should be shared by the citizens of this newly declared state. The Proclamation went on to guarantee ‘religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts’.

Greatly influenced by deference to the Catholic Church, our political leaders did not embrace the Marxist or communist beliefs of shared ownership of land and the means of production and the sharing of the proceeds more equitably, which were taking hold in other parts of the world. The Catholic Church was opposed to godless communism – and any assault on private property rights – and that was effectively that as far as Ireland was concerned. As our new political classes emerged, the commitment to private property became entrenched. The 1937 Constitution of Ireland confirmed this, declaring that the State would vindicate the property rights of every citizen. This means that any individual or corporate entity has a right to own, transfer and inherit property and bequeath it upon death.