“Money is never given without some conditionality attached,” according to Minister Martin Heydon, and the terms and conditions of the BEAM scheme were “clearly set out” in 2019.
Speaking in the Dáil on Wednesday, deputies Matt Carthy and Jackie Cahill raised concerns about the Beef Exceptional Aid Measure (BEAM).
This came as Agriland revealed yesterday that Minister Charlie McConalogue instructed his officials to apologise to farmers who saw penalties owed under the BEAM scheme applied as deductions to their Areas of Natural Constraint (ANC) scheme payments without being informed beforehand.
Deputy Carthy said that the BEAM scheme was “beset with confusion from the very beginning”.
“It is important to recall that the measure was put in place to provide farmers with temporary financial aid in response to a prolonged period of depressed beef prices,” the Sinn Féin TD said.
“It was a recognition that farmers were on their knees. The difficulty with the scheme from the outset was that it included a provision that farmers were required to commit to a 5% reduction in bovine livestock manure nitrogen, effectively meaning they were to reduce their stocking rate.
“When you consider that most of the farmers availing of this scheme were suckler farmers, who are probably the most sustainable farmers and producers of beef in the world, it made little sense. It was something I had a little concern about from the very start.”
The deputy said that “almost immediately”, there were reports of farmers “waiting up to six weeks to receive figures from the department, and farm advisers who had figures that were different from the department’s”.
“As a result of those debacles, a deferral or six-month extension to the scheme was secured, rightly, at the height of the third wave of Covid. This was the least that farmers should have expected.”
BEAM ‘clawback’
Carthy said that for those facing a ‘clawback’, “this is money that is now being taken from farmers who received the payment in the first place because of exceptional need”.
Deputy Jackie Cahill added that the conditions of the scheme were “extremely bureaucratic for hard-pressed beef finishers”.
Minister Heydon responded:
“All 33,000 farmers in the BEAM scheme had the opportunity to avail of the later reduction period if they wished and if it was necessary.
“Those who opted for the deferment but met the scheme conditions in the original period were automatically removed from the later reduction period because they had met the requirements. Almost 5,300 farmer participants were in this category and have exited the scheme without recoupment.
“The remaining 3,600 farmers decided not to opt for the later reduction period and, as of the end of June 2021, have failed to meet the obligations they signed up to under the BEAM scheme’s terms and conditions.
“Of the 3,600 farmers, 66% or 2,396, who are in the recoupment situation increased their nitrates during that reduction period.
“These 3,600 farmers will have some or all of the money they received in 2019 recouped. The total being recouped is now €5.2 million with the average recoupment per farmer at €1,700. Among the 3,600 farmers, almost 10% of cases involve less than €200 and almost a quarter involve less than €400.”
‘That was a business decision for them to make’
The minister added that the rules on recoupment of interest “are the same across all schemes”.
“They are set down. There is conditionality with respect to European rules involving European money,” he continued.
“[The farmers involved] had the option to continue on in the scheme but decided not to do that.
“Two-thirds of these farmers decided to increase their nitrogen organic output. The majority of those farmers made that conscious decision in the full knowledge that they were outside the terms and conditions of the scheme.
“That was a business decision for them to make and they felt it was the right thing to do, which was their right, but the terms of the scheme mean that money has to be recouped.”