DAERA officials have made changes to the coronavirus support package for NI beef farmers.

Initially, payments were to be available to the person who held the animal for the last consecutive 30-day period before slaughter.

However, senior DAERA official Norman Fulton outlined a different approach to Stormont’s agriculture committee last week.

“The payment will go to the person who was holding the animal at the point in which markets stepped down,” he said.

An additional payment of £40/head is available on cattle slaughtered between 29 March and 16 May 2020

“Some of these payments will go to individuals who sold heavy stores in the period impacted by the market disturbance,” Fulton confirmed.

A payment of £33/head is to be made on all prime cattle and cows slaughtered (or exported for slaughter) between 16 February and 30 June 2020.

An additional payment of £40/head is available on cattle slaughtered between 29 March and 16 May 2020.

Steven Millar from DAERA told MLAs that the department’s database holds all the information needed on who owned each eligible animal at any point in time.

“Those dates that we have set are the key dates for payments. We will identify who had the animal on those dates and those will be the people that we will be writing to,” he said.

Millar acknowledged that the new procedure would be more difficult to administer but he described it as a “more targeted and more accurate approach”.