A farmer forced to stop working due to illness was allowed to transfer his GLAS contract to the person leasing his farm after complaining to the Ombudsman last year.

The Department of Agriculture had initially told the farmer he could only transfer the contract to a relative.

However, the Department allowed it after the Ombudsman found that GLAS rules allowed transfers outside the family in cases of “certified serious illness”.

This was one of 93 complaints to the Ombudsman against the Department of Agriculture last year, a slight increase after several years of sharp declines. There were 155 complaints targeting the Department in 2014, falling to 87 in 2017.

The Basic Payment Scheme and its predecessor, the Single Farm Payment, caused the largest number of complaints in four of the last five years.

Legacy agri-environmental schemes such as AEOS and REPS were the focus of most complaints in 2017 and second-largest reason for disputes in 2018.

The Ombudsman rejected the majority of complaints against the Department, but upheld 16 fully and two partly.

Farmers had more success with their complaints in 2018 than in previous years.

Ten did not go ahead because the farmers withdrew them or had not yet exhausted their options to resolve the disputes with the Department first.

Four were outside the Department’s remit, and three concluded with the Ombudsman simply providing assistance to the farmer.

There were also four complaints to the Ombudsman against Teagasc and one against Bord Bia last year.

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