IN EXCESS of €671 million has been paid out to farmers since September 22nd,Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith said yesterday when defending the speed at which advance payments were being made.
The farm organisations criticised the Minister for delays in the payout of their EU Single Farm Payment and Disadvantaged Area Scheme to applicants who had to submit redigitised maps or have had to get their lands inspected.
But the Minister said it was essential the department’s land parcel identification scheme on which area-based schemes were made, were fully accurate given the system underpinned total expenditure in the schemes worth €1.8 billion annually.
Saying any errors could leave the department open to heavy fines, Mr Smith said he was confident farmers would receive all they were due by the end of the year. He dismissed some recent reports as being “ill-informed and inaccurate” and said he acknowledged some farmers would not receive their full advance payment because payments could not be made on land parcels requiring redigitising or amendment.
The Minister said he had implemented a provision whereby farmers not in receipt of their full advance payment could receive a supplementary advance payment following the redigitising of their land parcels. In the past, such farmers would have had to wait until December 1st before they could be paid their balancing additional payment as well as their payment. “This is . . . in line with my primary focus of issuing payments to farmers as soon as they became eligible,” he said.