Big farm appeals revamp

By Des Maguire and Paul Mooney

A new independent appeals unit for farmers to be called the Agriculture Appeals Office is on the way, the Minister for Agriculture Joe Walsh confirmed in the Dail this week. The provisions for the establishment of the unit are currently in the Attorney General's Office.

In addition the EU Commission has been asked to bring in a fairer penalty system for farmers penalised for mistakes and errors under the various livestock premia, headage and farm schemes, he said. This is in line with commitments given to IFA president Tom Parlon in the recent Partnership 2000 negotiations.

The new Agriculture Appeals Office is likely to be set up on an interim basis pending approval from the EU Commission to establish it on a statutory basis as agreed in the partnership talks.

Its remit will be widened beyond the headage and premia schemes which are the exclusive concern of the present appeals unit.

It is likely to include REPS and all major farm schemes where direct payments are made to individual farmers, as well as appeals under the new National Beef Assurance Scheme.

There is also provision in the Partnership Agreement for a special monitoring committee to be established, with an independent chairman and representation from the farm organisations to review performance on direct payments including inspection targets.

The move to set up a new Agriculture Appeals Office follows a report from an all-party Dail committee on strategic planning last April which said that the Department's current appeals system lacked independence and objectivity, was subject to undue delays and lacked credibility.

Since its establishment in 1995 the unit has received almost 3,000 appeals but over two-thirds of these have been rejected.

The all-party Dail committee said that if the appeals system was to be credible, it needed to be independent, accessible, quick to respond, properly resourced and empowered to enforce its decisions.

The appeals system currently operated by the Department failed to meet these requirements, the report said.

In the Dail this week the Minister admitted that the proportionality of penalties was "out of kilter" to the mistakes in many of the livestock schemes and he said that he has asked the Commission to review the penalties so that they are fairer and have a sense of balance and proportionality.

"The penalty whereby farmers in some cases are denied full payments for one or two years is too great," the Minister said. "Given that these penalties are written into the regulations this is not only a national problem. I have pressed the European Commission to ensure that the penalties are diluted, fairer and have a sense of balance and proportionality."

The total number of livestock applications which attracted penalties under the 1998 headage and premium schemes was 13,572, the Dail was told. This represented 2.6 per cent of the 522,000 applications received that year.

In the case of REPS between 800 and 1200 applicants would have attracted penalties of 20 per cent of aid.

In general, the Minister said, where an applicant makes an error in the completion of an application form his Department allows an opportunity to correct such errors.

"The most common error over the past year has been the incorrect transcription of tag numbers on application forms. The level of such errors has however greatly decreased in the past year following the more widespread use of new information technology in the processing of the special beef premium scheme whereby farmers are no longer required to list the individual ear tag number of all animals being applied for.

"Given the overall value of these direct payments to farmers and the fact that the value is set to increase following from the successful outcome of the AGENDA 2000 negotiations, it is inevitable that the Commission will wish to ensure that reasonable levels of controls are in place in the various member states," he said.