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The Department of Agriculture is among a number of government departments that have been linked to a UK company whose subsidiary worked on behalf of a so-called vulture fund.
UK-based company Capita owned both Capita Customer Solutions, which manages online calf registrations on contract to the Department of Agriculture, and owned Capita Asset Services, which acted as a debt management agent for the investment group Cerberus Capital Management. Cerberus Capital Management bought loans from Ulster Bank, which included farm loans.
Hugh Reynolds, a farmer from Coole, Co Westmeath, showed the Irish Farmers Journal documentation showing that Capita Asset Services was the agent that dealt with his bank debt once it had been bought by Cerberus Capital Management.
“My loan went bad and it was sold to a vulture fund,” Reynolds said.
In January 2017, while Capita Asset Services was dealing with Reynolds’ debt, Capita Customer Solutions was handling a €20m contract from the Department of Agriculture to deal with bovine births, deaths and movements, which runs until August 2018.
Reynolds told the Irish Farmers Journal that Cerberus Capital Management is now intending to sell 44ac of his farmland without his permission.
“I had a loan out of a bank and it went bad. I tried dealing with the bank on a few occasions, but it wouldn’t listen to me and it sold my loan to a vulture fund, for what I’ve been told was 20% of its value,” Reynolds said.
“The bank undervalued the land at €5,000/ac and the problem is it can drop the hammer on any sum of money because it just wants to get it off the books. Farmers in Ireland don’t realise that these funds are taking over good loans, as well as bad loans, and these sorts of vulture fund sales could become much more common in the future.”
The IFA and ICSA have called on the Government to prevent vulture funds from selling farms.
IFA farm business chair Martin Stapleton said: “IFA is clear that there should be no forced sale of the family farm, where the farmer has meaningfully engaged to find a solution.”
Farmers experiencing difficulties with debt can phone a confidential IFA helpline at 1890 924 853.
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