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Farmers have applied for €70m of the total €100m available in the Beef Exceptional Aid Measure (BEAM). There are four days left for farmers to apply for the remaining €30m.
Farmers have until midnight on Sunday 15 September to apply for the scheme. Finished animals attract a payment of €100/head while suckler cows will be paid €40/head.
Farmers who sold finished cattle through marts can also apply to BEAM.
Latest figures show there have been 28,626 applications to the scheme. Of those, some 7,000 have come from suckler farmers, almost 9,000 from beef finishers and 12,600 from mixed enterprises.
Galway leads the way for applications with 3,031 farmers signing up for the scheme. This is followed by 2,574 farmers in Cork and 2,350 in Mayo.
The top five counties are rounded out by Tipperary (1,847) and Roscommon (1,729). At the other end of the list, counties Dublin (87), Louth (339) and Wicklow (365) have the lowest number of applications.
It is estimated that over 70,000 farmers are eligible for a payment and approximately 41% of those have applied to the scheme.
The Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed extended the deadline for applications by a week “to facilitate applications from as many of these [eligible farmers] as possible”.
There are now calls from the IFA for the Minister to extend the scheme until after the National Ploughing Championships.
IFA president Joe Healy said such a move would “give farmers the opportunity to make their application on the Department of Agriculture stand at the Ploughing”.
Some farmers have contacted the Irish Farmers Journal to express confusion between deadlines for BEAM and the Beef Environmental Efficiency Pilot (BEEP).
The two schemes are separate and farmers have until 1 November to submit calf weights to qualify for BEEP payments.
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