There will be no need to apply any deductions to the number of claims for the £100 suckler payment, with the department confirming that numbers of eligible calving events in the first year of the scheme fall well short of what might had been expected.

Ahead of the scheme being opened on 1 April 2025, DAERA set a quantitative limit of 222,000 calving events and said that if numbers exceed that level in any of the four years, a linear reduction will be applied at farm level.

The latest figures suggest numbers will get nowhere near that limit and given tighter eligibility requirements as the scheme progresses, that situation won’t be changing into the future.

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Last June, census results put the number of suckler cows in NI at 213,744, down 5% on the previous year and the lowest total in 55 years.

It is important to remember that total does not include in-calf beef heifers, which were eligible for payment in the first year when calving down by a maximum of 34 months.

Taking both together, it might have been expected the number of eligible calving events would have been close to 200,000.

What has happened? It will be later in the year before we have 2026 census results published, but it would seem that the scheme has not led to a stabilisation of numbers. In fact, it may well have had the opposite effect – where a cow has been slow to get back in calf and potentially miss out on a future payment, it is an added reason to cull the animal.

However, it is also probably fair to suggest that record cattle prices over the last year created some apathy, while there is also lot of small, part-time producers who haven’t the time or the inclination of familiarise themselves with eligibility requirements of the scheme.

For those who have taken care around calving dates etc., there is a useful payment coming this summer.