Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue has said that it is impossible to identify the farmers who made ANC appeals due to forgetting to tick the relevant box on the application.

Under the current system, farmers are required to tick an ANC box on their online SPS application and TD Sean Canney raised his concerns through a parliamentary question that some farmers may be inadvertently forgetting to tick the box that would provide a substantial boost to their annual income.

Records

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He asked the Minister how many farmer appeals had been made on the subject, but was informed that it was impossible to extrapolate that information from the overall appeals.

“The records kept by Agriculture Appeals Office do not provide a breakdown of the reasons why ANC cases are appealed and therefore it is not possible to identify how many of these cases involved a failure to tick the ANC box at application stage,” the Minister said.

Overall, some 249 appeals have been made collectively since 2016. In 2020, the number of farmers making appeals doubled from the previous year, rising to 86.