“The obligation as now envisaged is that the process would be completed in time for the 2018 Basic Payment Scheme. It is 15 May this year and I think it will be around the same date next year,” Minister Creed said in response to a parliamentary question this week.

From 2018, soil moisture, low temperatures and sloping of land are among a range of criteria that will determine what land is to be designated across the EU. New ANC maps of the country based on these new criteria are currently being drawn up by the department.

Extension

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Last month, the Irish Farmers Journal reported that Minister Creed had highlighted difficulties in meeting the ANC review at the council of EU agriculture ministers and backed a call by the Austrian agriculture minister Andrä Rupprechter to extend the deadline to at least 2019.

However, this week Minister Creed said that the current deadline of next year would be met by the department if it is not changed.

“It would have been reckless of us not to because not meeting it at that stage would have meant that we would have been obliged to phase out the payments on a digressive basis. We certainly were not going to go down that road,” he said.

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