I noted recently that, according to the Department of Arts Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Waterways Ireland’s budget for the Clones Sheugh assumed a cost of land [including legal costs] of just over €52,500 per acre, when “the majority of [the land] is poor quality agricultural land”. I have asked Waterways Ireland for more information about this.
But today [as I am sure all regular readers will be aware] the Irish Farmers Journal Agricultural Land Price report 2014 has been published. It says that the average price of Co Monaghan land (based on 25 completed transactions) was only €9384 per acre, with a range from €1049 (for a 43-acre lot of which 12 acres were bog) to €40000 for land with development potential near Carrickmacross. A 25-acre “holding of prime agricultural land overlooking the lake at Emyvale” went for €14800 per acre and the county’s weighted average was €8103 per acre.
In Fermanagh, in Northern Ireland, the average price was £7493 (€10126) per acre, but “Lots of poor, rocky and heather land sold for around £1700/acre”.
Irish waterways history 