By Friday evening, 24,000 applications for the Beef Data and Genomics Programme (BDGP) had been sent into the Department’s office in Portlaoise, Co Laois.

Speaking to one member of staff in the Portlaoise office on Thursday, they said that applications for BDGP were “flying in… in greater volumes than we had been expecting”.

On Thursday, the Irish Farmers Journal exclusively reported that the Department had made the decision to extend the deadline from Friday, 29 May to Friday, 5 June. This was done to attempt to get more farmers into the scheme.

While the volume of application to the BDGP have increased in recent days, the number of 24,000 is still short of the 35,000 target that the Department had hoped would apply for the scheme.