Dublin farmers had the highest average gross income at €56,946, according to the latest figures from Revenue.

The figure is an average of the income of the 2,119 farmers in the county in 2016.

Kildare had the second-highest gross income at €54,882, followed by Meath at €48,913.

Farmers in Donegal had the lowest gross income in 2016, earning just €33,833.

The gross income figure includes off-farm and spousal income, and the figures highlight a huge disparity between the east and west of the country when broken down to gross versus farming income.

For example, farmers in Leitrim earned an average gross income of €39,160 and farmers in Wexford earned €41,967 in 2016.

However, when this broken figure is down to farm income, Leitrim farmers earned just €10,679 from agriculture versus €28,591 for Wexford farmers.

This highlights the importance of off-farm income in western counties.

Farmers paying tax

Cork had the highest number of farmers registered as paying tax, with 16,924 farmers earning an average gross income of €47,625.

This was followed with Tipperary, where 10,346 farmers earned a gross income of €45,341.

Dublin, Leitrim, Longford and Wicklow all had fewer than 3,000 farmers registered for submitting tax returns in 2016.

In total, 137,109 farmers paid tax in 2016 and earned an average gross income of €45,057 and an average farm income of €21,952.

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