Last Friday, the Department of Agriculture announced that a further €1.4m had been issued to 386 farmers under GLAS I and II. This brings the number of farmers waiting for their payments under the scheme to 5,407 out of a total of just under 38,000.

Replying to a parliamentary question from Fine Gael Longford-Westmeath TD Peter Burke on the scheme last Thursday, Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed said that his Department, as the accredited paying agency, must ensure that, before payment issues, everything in an application that can be checked is checked as required under the regulations.

“Therefore, payments can only issue where all the required validation checks have been successfully passed,” he said.

Reasons for delays

The minister added that outstanding payments under the scheme are largely delayed due to declaration of incompatible parcel usage on the Basic Payment Scheme application for a chosen GLAS action, changes in parcel boundaries on which a GLAS action is chosen including splitting or merging of parcels, an applicant no longer claiming a parcel on their 2016 BPS, incomplete documentation such as incorrect information on Low-Emission Slurry Declaration forms, incomplete interim commonage management plans and incompatible data and parcel history on Department databases.

Minister Creed added that he is “well aware” of the need to process all 2016 payments without delay and ensure that resources required both on the IT and administrative side are directed towards resolving the outstanding queries on these cases.

Farmers in dire straits

Last week, there were reports of farmers having to sell sheep to make ends meet while they await their GLAS payments, sheep they need to keep on the land to meet the requirements of the GLAS payment.

Read more

Full coverage: GLAS