State-owned railway company ProRail has paid €15m to buy strips of land running alongside railway tracks from a clever entrepreneur who picked it up for €1 in 2014.

ProRail decided at the time not to buy the land and went as far as to pay the entrepreneur €6.7m for its upkeep, Dutch media reported. It has now been forced to buy the land because it needs it to make bridges and tunnels across the tracks as part of a new campaign to make safe level crossings.

A spokesman for ProRail told reporters that the decision not to buy the land could not be regarded as a mistake. ‘It was never offered to us under same conditions,’ the spokesman said. The NS, however, says that had offered the land to ProRail.

Earlier this month it emerged that ProRail had paid €18m for another package of bits of land running alongside railways.