The Department of Agriculture has been on time in the most part when it comes to commencing scheme payments to farmers.

Its record in completing payments, however, has been more in line with previous years, despite press releases and payment updates stating the contrary.

A timeline of scheme payment dates was circulated outlining when these payments were due to begin issuing to participants.

Areas of Natural Constraints (ANC) kicked off the money roll-out in September.

The template is not consistent for every scheme

Updates issued by the Department revealed very impressive figures on the number of farmers paid in each scheme since they started to issue.

However, the figures seem to be skewed in the Department’s favour when the numbers are broken down.

Every week a scheme payments update is published on the Department’s website.

The figures are displayed for each scheme, with most showing the number of farmers paid and the payment amounts in euro.

The template is not consistent for every scheme, though.

The BPS template, for example, only shows the number of farmers paid, the number of “eligible” farmers and the total payments in monetary terms.

The GLAS template just shows all the scheme payments in monetary form with no figures showing the number of farmers paid or the number of farmers in the scheme.

The haphazard portrayal of scheme payments makes it almost impossible to scrutinise the figures and accurately assess the state of payments.

The Department often uses the term that payments have been issued to x number of “eligible” applicants, but it omits the number of “ineligible” farmers or the reasons why they are “ineligible” for payment.

The Irish Farmers Journal requested figures this week on the number of farmers who have been paid in each scheme to date, the number of farmers participating in each scheme in total including “eligible” and “ineligible” participants and the reasons why farmers are ineligible for payment in each scheme.

Unfortunately we did not receive an adequate response before we went to press to be able to draw any conclusion.

When we leave out the jargon terms of “eligible” and “ineligible” farmers, the gulf between the actual numbers paid versus the total number of farmers in the scheme is quite large.

The table shows the figures of total number of farmers paid so far this year compared with the total number of farmers participating in the scheme.

We have estimated the number of farmers participating in the scheme as accurate figures are not available from the Department.