Major delays in GLAS payments have frustrated thousands of farmers for a number of years.

“GLAS really seems to have dragged on this year but the pure lack of communication between the Department and farmers is what is really annoying farmers. There has to be some line of communication there,” IFA South Leinster regional chair Tom Short told the Irish Farmers Journal.

One of the biggest issues, according to farm advisers, is that the maps used for GLAS appear to be incompatible with those used for the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS).

Land parcel identifier numbers on GLAS maps do not correlate with the parcels on the BPS maps.

Farmers have received notices from the GLAS section of the Department and told to contact the BPS section to fix the problem.

However, this will not always solve the problem. A farmer in the southeast, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Irish Farmers Journal that he was at his wit’s end.

The re-digitisation process for his maps was carried out at the beginning of December but he has yet to receive his 85% advance GLAS payment for 2017.

“Whatever map is submitted to the Department and is accepted at the beginning of the scheme should be the one that is used for the rest of the scheme,” Shortt argues.

“It’s not good enough that they [the Department] can decide to re-digitise maps and hold up whole payments for what might be less than 1% of a change to a parcel.

“Farmers are under pressure to get payments. Why can’t they receive the entire advance payment and take any penalties from the remaining balancing payment?” he asked. “At least it would keep the wolves away from the door.”

“No young farmer will want to come back to the farm, why would they with issues like these?”

The re-digitisation of maps is an issue that has been raised by both advisers and farmers on numerous occasions over the past few months.

Exact figures for how many farmers have had to get maps re-digitised for GLAS have been sought from the Department by the Irish Farmers Journal on multiple occasions. The Department has not provided any answer to date.

Case study

‘My entire payment was held up over €13’

The re-digitisation problem is not new, as Donegal IFA hill sheep representative Brian Duffy explained.

“They held up my entire payment for land that had to be re-digitised worth approximately €13.

“It’s ridiculous that any discrepancies and they won’t pay you completely. If it was 10ha to 20ha that was wrong, it would be one thing, but for the majority of these cases it is less than 0.1ha,” he said.

“They should be able to examine the extent of the issue and apply a bit of common sense to the whole situation.

“Common sense seems to have gone completely out the window with these schemes. If it is a miniscule amount it can be collected again (from balancing payments).

Instead farmers now face the issues of getting two payments in the one year, which could then leave them with a big tax bill,” he added.