Northern farm payment details placed on the web

By James Campbell

Controversy has arisen with details of EU Common Agriculture Policy subsidies paid to farmers in Northern Ireland having been placed on the website of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) this week.

The website gives over 33,000 names and amounts ranging from a top of Stg£250,000 down to the ridiculous payment of 2 pence to one claimant.

Democratic Unionist Party MEP Jim Allister said that the move was an infringement of farmers' privacy and individual details should not have been published.

The Ulster Farmers' Union emphasised that the published figures do not reflect the final income position for farms, commenting that many local farms have been consistently earning below the National Minimum Wage.

The UFU also criticised the publication of individual details, arguing that this would divert attention from the debate about value for money being delivered by the CAP. They pointed out that agriculture accounts for just 3% of public expenditure in NI.

UFU chief executive Clarke Black commented that "almost half" of the 33,000 people in the list received under Stg£2000.

Of much more interest to the general media was the fact that 51 had received Stg£100,000 or more during the EU financial year to October 2004. These included the UFU president Campbell Tweed with almost Stg£177,000 and the DARD College farm with Stg£114,000.

Almost 300 others received between Stg£50,000 and £100,000. Many of these 350 major recipients of CAP payments have been beef finishers who claimed Beef Special Premium payments on large numbers of steers and also had claims for Slaughter Premium and Extensification payments. Although they claimed the payments, they paid much of the money out to others when buying cattle for finishing.

Under the hybrid Single Farm Payment system being implemented in Northern Ireland, their SFP will be significantly less than the premia income previously claimed because the Beef Special Premium is one of the main entitlements that has been scaled back in order to fund an area based element of the hybrid SFP.

The Single Farm Payments will also include the decoupled dairy premium element and that will bring some new names into the higher reaches of the list.

The payments shown on the website are from the livestock premia, extensification and arable aid schemes plus Agri-environment and Forestry Schemes.

The information on CAP subsidy payments can be accessed on the DARD website at www.dardni.gov.uk/grantsandsubsidies.