Payments under the Beef Data and Genomics Programme (BDGP), which commenced in December, continue, with compliance verification ongoing for almost 2,000 participants, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has confirmed.

In a brief statement on the matter to AgriLand, a spokesperson for the department said:

“Payments under the 2020 Programme year for both BDGP I and BDGP II commenced in December 2020 and as of this week a total of 22,086 active participants have received payments of €39.85 million.

The issue with partnership cases has been resolved with 550 partnership cases paid in recent weeks.

“Payments to the remaining 1,914 participants will continue to be made under the programme over the coming weeks as participating farmer’s compliance with scheme requirements are verified.”

When queried on the partnership issue, a department spokesperson explained:

“There was a change in the way the department processed partnership cases through its IT systems in 2020.

“This necessitated an amendment to the BDGP payment system and this work was not fully completed at the time of the December payments.

The work was finished in January and payments issued to all eligible BDGP partnership cases in February. There were a total of 630 partnership cases in BDGP due a payment in December 2020. So far, 585 of them have been paid.

“The remaining cases (45) are currently being processed and payments will be made when their compliance with scheme requirements is verified,” the department representative concluded.