Few Mayo farmers have faith in Department of Agriculture claims MEP
MEP Luke Ming Flanagan blasted the contrast in fine words in an EU Parliamentary debate on the “Dialogue on the future of EU Agriculture” with the reality for farmers trapped in the quagmire of the Acres scheme in Ireland.
The Acres environmental scheme was launched with much fanfare as part of CAP 2023-2027. It promised to provide meaningful income supports to farmers while at the same time protecting and restoring biodiversity on Irish farms.
The Midlands North West MEP remarked that, “the platitudes and aspirations espoused in the chamber were never more divorced from reality for farmers on the ground.” Many farmers in Mayo have been left dealing with delayed payments and requests to repay funding that had been allocated to them.
In the intervening period, the roll out of the scheme has been beset with delays, lack of information and a lack of clarity for participating farmers. It is clear that the bottleneck in getting payments out to farmers rests with the department, due to inadequate IT systems and a lack of urgency to address problems that have arisen, stated MEP Flanagan.
The manner in which flat rate payments were made to farmers to cover up the ineptitude of the department that are now subject to a clawback is unacceptable, he added.
The situation of farmers in the CP areas (Co-operation areas) is particularly acute and unfair he highlighted. These farmers are managing our most precious landscapes in terms of biodiversity, but have been let down the most.
They entered in good faith, into what was sold as a comprehensive scheme with a substantial core payment based on an initial scoring of the habitat with the opportunity to top this up with additional targeted measured to aid biodiversity.
“What these farmers have got is delay after delay, almost two years into the scheme initial habitat scores are only being released to farmers. Without knowing their baseline position there has been no opportunity for farmers to address this issue to increase the score the next time the habitat is assessed.”
The roll out of the NPIs (Non Productive Investments) to address negative issues that were identified is a similar story, he stated. Despite planners submitting proposal for NPIs on the behalf of their client farmers to the department none of these have been approved.
This is a double edged sword for participating farmers, not only do farmers lose out on the money that they could be getting for carrying out the actions, they are also disadvantaged in that if they were cleared to carry out NPI's, it could address a negative issue that is locking them in on a low score on their commonage.
“Farmers deserve better”, stated MEP Flanagan, they deserve fairness, transparency and competence from the Department. If farmers conducted their business in a similarly incompetent unprofessional manner they would immediately excluded from payments, however for the department there is no accountability or no one taking responsibility.
This matters, he said returning to the debate in the Plenary in Strasbourg. In the debate, speaker after speaker said that CAP must be reformed, to have more targeted payments, supporting farmers who need it most.
To do this the authorities must demonstrate that they have the ability and capability to take on the role on delivering a more targeted scheme. Few farmers have faith in the Department to deliver on this he concluded.