The man who couldn’t be bought

On a Co Kildare farm, filmmaker Feargal Ward discovered what happened when all the force of international capital and state authority met an immovable object

Thomas Reid, the Co Kildare farmer who took the state to the Supreme Court after the IDA attempted to carry out the compulsory purchase of his land for industrial development;

It was the tail end of summer 2015, and Feargal Ward was driving down a country road on the border of Leixlip and Maynooth, near where his mother still lived. He stopped his car outside an old 17th-century house, curious about the handwritten signs that were stuck all over the front gates, radiating anxiety and urgency.

When Ward got out of the car, the owner of the house, a man by the name ...