A total of 6,497 farmers had penalties applied to their Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payments in 2019, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Michael Creed has confirmed.

In response to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy on the matter last week, the minister provided a breakdown of how many farmers received a penalty, where such farmers were located and how much of a penalty they received.

The minister noted that the data provided includes late application penalty cases that were received after the 2019 closing date.

“Those applications that were received after June 10, 2019, are 100% late penalty cases and are included,” Minister Creed added.

A total of 122,846 farmers across the 26 counties received a BPS payment last year; of these some 116,349 farmers were paid with no penalty applied (96.71%).

This means that 5.29% of farmers had a penalty applied last year for various reasons.

The county with the highest number of penalty cases was Co. Cork, which accounted for some 1,006 cases, though this was also the county with the highest number of applications in general.

On the opposite end of the scale, Co. Louth had the fewest penalty cases, with 62 such cases, out of a total of 1,458 applications.

In terms of the extent of penalties applied, the minister noted that, of the 6,497 farmers in question, 5,430 farmers had penalties of less than 10%.

441 had penalties of between 10% and 20%; 196 had penalties of between 20% and 30%; 68 were between 30% and 40%; and 64 BPS applicants had penalties applied of between 40% and 50%.

On the higher end of things: 28 farmers had penalties in the 50-60% range; 25 were in the 60-70% range; 16 applicants were in the 70-80% category; and five farmers had penalties of between 80% and 90%.

Finally, some 224 BPS applicants had a penalty applied of over 90%.