DEAR SIR: There has been a lot written over the last few months about the BEAM scheme.

When the scheme was introduced, the rules were published for anyone interested to study and decide whether to enter or not. It’s hard to believe that some people now feel that the rules should be changed.

Any change would be totally unfair to those that felt that because of the 5% N reduction they could not avail of the scheme and of course to all that complied with the rules.

Compare this to GLAS. For GLAS, a commonage plan was to be adhered to by participants who had commonage land. This required that commonage be stocked in accordance with each person’s share.

A number of farmers who hadn’t already stock on commonage felt it was not practical to comply, so didn’t enter the scheme, while others withdrew when the conditions were published.

However, others participated and never stocked the commonage and still continue to get paid each year.

It would appear to me that people who entered BEAM are being discriminated against by having every application checked.