IFA president, John Bryan, has called on the Minister for Agriculture, Brendan Smith, to address the “draconian” penalties being imposed where his Department have deemed that the farmers have over-claimed land for Single Farm Payment and the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme.

Mr Bryan said that the level of penalties being imposed on the farmers affected is excessive and will impact severely on farm income in 2010 and beyond. He believes that backdating the penalties to 2005 is totally unfair and unacceptable as in most cases the farmer had declared the lands, which he had considered and was advised previously to be eligible for payment.  Indeed, he added, the Department of Agriculture themselves has inspected this land and deemed it eligible in the past.

The IFA President also said that it is clear that ineligible areas such as houses, sites, roadways and farmyards have to be excluded from the SFP application. However he feels it is unacceptable that the Department of Agriculture are applying a stricter interpretation of the criteria to exclude many areas that were included for payment in the past.

Mr Bryan called on the Minister for Agriculture to insist that his Department refrain from penalising farmers and to set in motion a resolution to this problem. “The Minister will have to go back to Brussels to argue that the penal retrospective approach where the Department is going back over 5 years is not acceptable. Imposing penalties on farmers who are so dependent on the direct payment system and living on unacceptably low incomes without having recourse to rectify the problem is not acceptable either,” concluded the IFA President.