The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has written to farmers this week reminding them of the “key payment dates” in 2023.
Earlier this year, the department confirmed that payment dates for the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) – the replacement for the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) in the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – and the Areas of Natural Constraints (ANC) scheme would be pushed back by several weeks.
The delay to payments has been among the reasons that the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has held several protests in recent weeks.
The farming organisation called on Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue to ensure that farmers would get their payments on time.
DAFM
In a letter to farmers this week, DAFM said that “a new and very different Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)” is being rolled out across the EU this year.
“New schemes require new administrative systems, new control arrangements and new IT systems,” it said.
The department said it is “very aware of the importance of these advance payments” and “will endeavour to revert to earlier payment dates in 2024”.
The letter outlined the following scheme payment dates for 2023:
- Areas of Natural Constraints (ANC) Scheme: Advance payment for cleared cases to begin issuing from October 17;
- BISS and Complementary Redistributive Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS): Advance payment for cleared cases to begin issuing from October 24;
- Eco-scheme: Advance payment for cleared cases to begin issuing from October 31;
- Balancing payments for these schemes and the Complementary Income Support for Young Farmers (CISYF) will begin issuing to cleared cases in December 2023;
- Sheep Improvement Scheme (SIS): Payments to commence for cleared cases from November 20;
- National Dairy Beef Welfare Scheme: Payments to commence for cleared cases from December 4;
- Protein Aid Scheme: Payments to commence for cleared cases from December 6;
- Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP): Payments to commence for cleared cases from December 11;
- National Beef Welfare Scheme (NBWS): Payments to commence for cleared cases from December 11;
- Tillage Incentive Scheme (TIS): Payments to commence for cleared cases from December 11;
- Straw Incorporation Measure (SIM): Payments to commence for cleared cases from December 13.
DAFM urged farmers or their advisor to reply to any correspondence or queries from the department “in a timely manner” to ensure their scheme application(s) can be processed for payment.
The department also reminded farmers to respond any issues arising from satellite farm inspections.
The Area Monitoring System (AMS) is mandatory across all EU member states as part of the new CAP to monitor compliance with farm scheme criteria.
Agriland understands that AMS notifications were sent to around 2,000 farmers yesterday (Thursday, September 14).
These notifications related to potential identification of an incorrect crop declared on a land parcel or the potential presence of multiple crops, that is two or more crops within the land parcel where only one was declared.
Last month, 2,500 farmers were sent similar notifications by the department.
Applicants will have until October 2, 2023 to respond to this notification.