The number of farmers choosing to opt-out of the Eco-scheme has fallen from 12% to 2% in the past week, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has confirmed.
It comes after changes were made to the online Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) application portal after more than 400 farmers chose not to participate in the scheme by accident.
Last week, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue confirmed that about 12% of farmers opted-out of the scheme, despite the fact that many were eligible to draw down payment from it.
Further investigation found that many of these farmers had done so mistakenly, by ticking a particular box during the application process.
However, the DAFM has told Agriland that it has replaced this declaration box with a simplified ‘opt-out’ button, which is accompanied by a warning message.
It explained that when the applicant selects this opt-out button, a warning message pops up, informing the farmer or advisor that they have chosen not to participate in the Eco-scheme.
“You have opted-out of the Eco-scheme. Please be aware, you will not get a payment under the Eco-scheme,” it states.
“DAFM has worked swiftly on refining the online application to minimise any further risk of applicants withdrawing from the Eco-scheme in error,” the department said.
“The remedial action carried out on the opt-out feature combined with communication with farmers and FAS Advisors has seen the opt-out rate drop from 12% to 2% in the last week.”
It also confirmed that it will contact the 400 farmers who made the error in the coming weeks to confirm whether or not they made an error in their selection.
Eco-scheme payment
The department previously told Agriland that an advance payment for the Eco-Scheme is expected to be made on October 31, 2023.
This will come shortly after the advance payment for the Complementary Redistributive Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS) is paid on October 23, 2023, along with the BISS payment.
Balancing payments for the three schemes mentioned above are then expected to be issued in December 2023, which will be in line with the timeline from previous years.