The lack of clarity from DAERA over entitlement values for the 2025 scheme year has been heavily criticised by agricultural consultants.

Omagh-based entitlement broker Roy McCracken described the ongoing uncertainty as “ridiculous” and “extremely disappointing”.

A key problem with the delay is that all deals for trading entitlements remain on hold until the actual values for 2025 become known.

“It’s been an absolute disaster this year because we haven’t been able to get started. We have loads of enquiries about trading entitlements but all we are doing is backing up the work,” McCracken said.

On enquiry, DAERA told the Irish Farmers Journal that entitlement values for the current scheme year “will be available later in March 2025”.

Agricultural consultants are now concerned that the late confirmation leaves a tight window to get all deals agreed and entitlements transferred before the 15 May deadline.

“The work for agents is crammed into the last few weeks and that is when you can make mistakes. There is a lot of paperwork to do to make sure transactions happen correctly,” McCracken said. DAERA has already announced that the closure of the entitlement transfer window will be extended by two weeks and will now coincide with Single Application deadline on 15 May 2025.

“While the department are allowing us another fortnight on at the end, any advantage is gone because we have lost more than the first two weeks of this month,” McCracken said.

“The extension is probably going to compound the work because entitlement transfers and Single Applications are both folding up at the one time,” he added.

Changes in 2025

Whilst the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) has been renamed the Farm Sustainability Transition Payment this year, each farmer’s existing BPS entitlements will form the basis of claims in 2025.

The ongoing confusion with entitlements mainly surrounds how much needs to come off the value of all entitlements in NI to free up money to fund the new Suckler Cow Scheme.

It was initially suggested that another cut of around 8-9% would be needed, although an underspend with the Beef Carbon Reduction Scheme in 2024 means a smaller reduction might apply now instead.