The Department of Agriculture has doubled the grant aid available to marts for electronic tagging systems.

Marts can now draw down grants for 80% of the cost of electronic identification device (EID) equipment to operate as central points of recording (CPR). The maximum funding is €15,000/mart.

The Department originally offered grant aid of 40%, with a total budget of €720,000 set aside for marts.

Over 40 marts have so far indicated to the Department that they intend to install EID tag-reading systems. However, none of those marts are operating as CPRs yet.

For farmers, the cost of switching to a full EID tagging system has been estimated at €2m annually, compared with the old system.

Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed has subsidised farmers with €1/set of EID tags, up to a maximum of €100/farmer. A total of €2.9m has been allocated for this farmer subsidy, which is available on tag orders until 31 September.

To date, €689,605 has been paid to 9,859 farmers in the first two payment runs. The next payment is expected to be made in July.

Since 1 June, farmers have been required to tag all sheep and lambs departing their farms with EID tags.

Lambs going directly to slaughter require a single electronic tag, while those moving through marts require a full EID tag set.