Around €250,000 worth of GPS hardware has been stolen from farms over the past two years, according to data collected by the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA).
Thefts on GPS devices from tractors, particularly on potato and tillage farms, has been a growing problem in Ireland.
However, since Christmas, there has been a spate of robberies with at least 16 machinery yards reporting thefts in Cork, Wexford, Dublin and Meath.
The value of stolen hardware ranges from €5,000 and €25,000, according to the IFA.
IFA deputy President Alice Doyle said the high-tech equipment is needed in order to plant crops like corn and potatoes and those most affected are tillage farmers and contractors.
She said the thefts impose huge increases in insurance costs and time as it could take four to five weeks to replace the equipment.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland Ms Doyle said: “These farmers are under severe pressure. They’re unable now to use their GPS’s in order to do their planting correctly. They can continue to do it, but it won’t be done as nearly efficiently or as well as it would have been done had they had these pieces of equipment.”
She said that some of the equipment can be removed at the end of the work day, but some parts of it are in the tractor and cannot be dismantled every day.
Ms Doyle said it GPS theft is a relatively new crime for Ireland, but is being seeing more and more in recent years.
She said those behind the thefts “know exactly where to go” and “obviously seem to have a market and that’s why we would be asking, for example the gardaí, to maybe operate some more checkpoints in these areas because in certain areas are targeted”.
Ivan Curran has a potato, tillage and beef farm in Stamullen in Co Meath, near the Dublin border.
He had farm GPS equipment stolen from his property on the Saturday 3 February.
The following morning, he was able to watch the two suspected thieves on his own CCTV footage.
“They spent about an hour walking around the yards, checking all the machinery and they were looking for GPS’,” Mr Curran said.
The pair broke into the tractor and took a GPS screen from inside it.
He added that his neighbours had three screens and the modems on top of their tractors stolen over the same weekend and that one neighbour has been a victim of GPS theft three times.
Mr Curran said he is still waiting for his new GPS screen to arrive, but said he was lucky with the weather, being so wet so he would not have planted his potatoes yet anyway.
“When we get busy in another week or two, we’ll be starting to plant potatoes and sow corn.
“You could manage without it [the GPS] but it’d be very, very hard work.”
Additional reporting Eithne Dodd
