The Department of Agriculture is expecting a flood of applications for the EU Early Retirement Scheme for farmers aged 55 or over following an amendment to the rules which had been preventing many from qualifying for the package.
The first scheme, introduced in the MacSharry CAP Reform plan in 1994, had assisted 9,400 farmers to retire, but because the Commission insisted widows' and widowers' pensions could be deducted before age 66 in the new scheme, there was a lowering of interest in the pension.
The Commission had held that this was a national retirement pension and must be deducted from the farm retirement pension whatever the age of the person receiving it.
Yesterday, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Mr Noel Davern, announced that it had persuaded the Commission to change the rules.
"I felt strongly from the outset that the widows' and widowers' pensions should not be regarded as a national retirement pension until a person getting it had reached the normal retirement age of 66," he said yesterday.
Mr Davern said anyone in the scheme below the age of 66 who is currently having the pension deducted would now get a full refund backdated to the time they joined the scheme.
Figures released yesterday show that the Department has received 957 applications for the new scheme. The Department approved 598 of these, are currently processing 297 others and have rejected 54.
The Department said the number of applications had been lower than expected and this was compounded by the backlog of work on other schemes in consultancy and other firms caused by the foot-and-mouth crisis which prevented farms being visited.