Sattelite images of Irish cereal farms have uncovered evidence that a thousand of the claims for EU subsidies received by the Department of Agriculture were incorrect.
This week the Department of Agriculture has demanded its money back from the growers, who had claimed €320 per hectare on thousands of hectares of land under the EU's Arable Aid Scheme.
The cereal farmers were shocked earlier in the year when the Department wrote to 5,000 of them querying their claims for EU supports. The Department said it was supporting its evidence of false claims by using satellite imagery taken from 1987 to 1991.
Legitimate claims for the aid payments, which totalled €133.5 million to 17,000 applicants last year, had to be based on the land being used for tillage during any of those years. The spy-in-the-sky images, which were taken by a French satellite for the Department, showed that the lands on which the claims were being made had not been used for tillage in those years.
Although 75 per cent of the farmers who were written to last month convinced the Department that their claims were not bogus, about a thousand have not been able to do so. The Department confirmed yesterday it had written to those farmers demanding repayment and outlining penalties the growers will now face for over-claiming.
These vary from 30 per cent of the 2001 arable aid payment to a return of the entire payment, depending on the extent of the errors. The most recent statistics show that 74 per cent of family farm income on cereal farms comes in direct payments.
The Irish Farmers' Association said many of the errors occurred because the reference years involved (1987 to 1991) were a long time ago, and this had created difficulties for farmers without records covering that period. It has urged farmers who believe they are being unnecessarily penalised, and who disagree with the outcome of the imagery cross-checks, to appeal their penalties.
The Department said yesterday it would have full information on Thursday on the extent of the overpayments made to farmers, the area involved and what it expected to recoup from the claimants.
Ireland's cereal farmers are the richest in the agricultural sector, with incomes exceeding dairy, beef and sheep farmers. In 2001 they planted 283,300 hectares of crops, mainly barley. They saw a 5.8 per cent increase in direct payments from €126 million in 2000 to €133.5 million.