Matt and Sean Conway are a father/son dairy farming duo, located between Croghan and Rhode in Co. Offaly.

They bought a 90ac parcel of land in 2003, and in 2014 got into financial difficulty after their herd got locked up with tuberculosis (TB).

After a few challenging years, the farm got back on track in 2017. However, the duo say a few payments had been missed on the land.

Speaking to Agriland at a protest at the farm today, Thursday, July 29, Matt Conway explained he went to the bank to see if the loan on the 90ac farm of land could be restructured.

He said he had no issue paying additional interest on the repayments if the loan could be restructured.

Matt told Agriland that the bank outlined it would consider the case but then informed the family that the loan had been sold to a vulture fund.

Offaly Grazing block

Matt’s son Sean – who is a full-time dairy farmer with his father, explained the duo are currently milking 150 cows and the Offaly farm in question forms part of the grazing block.

He told Agriland that the farm was initially a beef farm and, with the abolition of quotas in 2015, transitioned primarily to a dairy farm.

Sean expressed his passion for farming having left school after completing his Junior Certificate and went to Gurteen College to study agriculture.

Sean will be 25 years old this year and has been farming at home in Co. Offaly on a full-time basis with his dad for almost 10 years now.

He explained: “After working the past 10 years of my life for this, just to see it being taken off us and sold.

“It’s very hard to be in a problem and have no one at the other side of the phone to sort it out with. I would love for them to come and even talk to us. They [the vulture fund] won’t talk to us at all.”

IFA stance

The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) is holding a protest today at the farm in opposition to the forced sale of lands in Co. Offaly by the vulture fund ‘Everyday’ – and is urging the farming community to “stand together in solidarity” with the family in question.

In attendance at the protest this morning was the IFA’s treasurer Martin Stapleton who said: “The IFA is here today because this family has made a very serious offer to repay this debt and that offer has been turned down.

“It is unconscionable that a fund thinks it can throw a family out of their farm. That’s why IFA is here.”

He stressed that the IFA’s stance is “where reasonable offers have been made, we would stand behind the family in that situation”.

However, he outlined that this is a reoccurring issue and said “where funds own loans, it is next to impossible to refinance”.

“You have a fund and its only focus is to claim back money as fast as possible.

“The IFA wants the fund to renegotiate a repayment that’s workable for the farm but also allows the fund to recover their money.

“I fundamentally believe when farmers borrow money, they want to repay it, but in some cases, they need the opportunity to renegotiate,” Stapleton added.

Also at the protest today, Rose Mary McDonagh, national chair of the Farm Business Committee said: “I’m here today to stand with the family in support of them staying on their farm.

“They are living here, this is a forced sale and the vulture fund is trying to sell it via an online auction.

“We would be asking interested buyers, not to be interested because there’s no vacant possession here; the family are living on the farm, they’re working the farm; it’s a functioning dairy and beef farm and they are trying to make a living off it.

“It might be a distressed loan, but all the farmer wants is time to make his repayments.

“The farmer has made an offer to repay the full amount of the total debt in the coming few years,” she added.

Concluding, McDonagh said: “All the family want is time to repay the debt in full, and the vulture fund [is] being extremely unreasonable and not accepting the offers put to them.”