The Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed is satisfied that every effort possible is being made to complete this process as quickly as possible, a statement from the Department of Agriculture has said.

To date 27,400 of the 37,500 participants in the scheme have received 85% of their payment totalling almost €100m, the latest figures from the Department of Agriculture show.

The Minister is keen to provide clarity to farmers awaiting payment at this stage.

Furthermore, in order to ensure outstanding payments are issued without delay, the Department has said all resources from an IT and administrative perspective are being directed towards resolving the outstanding issues.

All GLAS applications must pass regulatory controls and validations, as is the case with all EU co-funded schemes.

The outstanding cases relate to applications that did not pass these checks and in the majority of cases is due to a query on a selected GLAS action or a land parcel on their holding.

All of these cases must be reviewed on a case by case basis to determine if the actions involved should be removed from the scheme or allowed to proceed to payment.

Examples of issues leading to delayed payments are as follows:
  • Declaration of an incompatible parcel usage for the GLAS action chosen.
  • Changes in parcel boundaries on which a GLAS action is chosen, including splitting or merging of parcels.
  • An applicant no longer claiming parcel on BPS 2016.
  • Incomplete documentation such as incorrect information on Low-Emission Slurry declaration.
  • Incomplete interim commonage management plans.
  • Incompatible data and parcel history on Department databases.

The Department has said that it is not possible to provide a definitive time-frame for the completion of payments due to the individual nature of the outstanding issues, however every effort is being made to process all payments as quickly as possible.

It also said that the Minister understands and regrets the difficulty this uncertainty will cause for farmers involved and is being updated on a continuous basis by his officials on progress.

It is understood that a further payment run is due this week and it is expected that over 1,000 payments will issue.

Further payment runs will be made on a weekly basis as cases are cleared.