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Payments totalling £3.6m should be made into the bank accounts of around 21,000 farmers in the next few days, Minister Poots has confirmed.
The money is a reimbursement of the financial discipline mechanism, which is taken off farmers every year to fund the EU crisis reserve.
Normally it is returned the following year, so the impact on payments is effectively zero.
With the UK now outside the CAP, financial discipline was not applied to 2020 payments, and the money taken in 2019 is now being paid back.
On amounts over €2,000, the percentage being reimbursed is 1.39%, so for a farmer with a €20,000 direct payment, the total to be returned is in the region of £223.
Higher payments
As well as no financial discipline applied in 2020, and the 2019 money being returned, farmers in NI also benefited from a 4.3% increase in entitlement values this year after DAERA reallocated money away from unused entitlements.
The vast majority of farmers received full payments in October.
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