The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine has said work is underway to give farmers the option of using a "mobile authentication app" to enchance security on their customer accounts with his department.

According to Minister Martin Heydon, this will help farmers who live in areas where "receipt of SMS messages is weak or unreliable".

Last month, Minister Heydon launched a new platform which aims to "to make it easier to access, understand and use the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine’s (DAFM) online services".

The new MyAgFood.ie website will shortly replace the agfood.ie platform.

However concerns have been raised, including by the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA), about problems farmers who live in areas with weak mobile or unstable wifi have had in accessing the website.

The IFA rural development chair, John Curran, had asked the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine (DAFM) to review the revamped portal because of the difficulties some farmers have experienced in logging on to platform.

Farmers

The Fianna Fáil TD for Tipperary North, Ryan O'Meara, has now also asked Minister Heydon to outline what efforts are being taken to "address concerns and login issues reported by farmers following recent changes". 

In response, Minister Heydon said that additional security measures had been recently introduced "to help protect farmer’s personal, banking, and commercial data and require individuals who wish to view scheme applications, payment, or animal data to have a registered account protected by two-factor authentication".

"That option will be made available shortly," he added.

According to Minister Heydon, DAFM plans to continue to add new services and features based on feedback from users of MyAgFood.ie and said that the launch last month was just phase one for the website.

He has also said there will be "an ongoing journey of improvements" to the site based on feedback.