Farm businesses with associated herds that received a letter from the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) can respond after the deadline of 9 September if more time is needed, but the later the response the more likely payments will be delayed, Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill has said.

It is understood around 3,000 letters were sent out to farm businesses that had herds or flocks on APHIS, which were registered against two or more farm businesses in the 2015 Single Application Form (SAF).

The letter has asked for an explanation of how the farm businesses operate separately or else for the businesses to merge together. A three-week deadline of 9 September was originally given for a response.

Yesterday, Minister O’Neill said: “DARD will still accept the explanation of operational separateness or merger applications received after 9 September. However, the later the response from the businesses, the more likely it will be that their 2015 payments will be delayed.”

Minister O’Neill still encouraged applicants to respond before Wednesday in order for SAF processing to continue and maintained that if there was no uncertainty, then payments would be made in December.

She added: “It is particularly important that any business which has received this letter and has also applied for the regional reserve responds by 9 September to allow us to calculate entitlement values for all farmers.”

DARD has advised that if two or more businesses do not operate separately, then they should merge under a single farm business ID and that there is no issue with retaining the original business arrangements within a single farm business ID. This would allow payments to be divided up between parties whatever way once it has been made.