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Some 291 GLAS payments were issued to farmers in the past week, the Department of Agriculture has confirmed.
This brings the number of farmers still awaiting payment under GLAS I and GLAS II to 5,793. The payment run amounted to €1m in all, equating to an average payment per farmer of €3,436.
In all, 31,057 have been paid to date. The last four payment runs cleared 1,300 farmers, 970 farmers, 350 farmers and 291 farmers in that order.
An additional payment run is expected in the coming days, but there was no indication from the Department as to how many farmers will be included in this run.
When asked how many farmers will not be paid at all because they do not meet the requirements of the GLAS scheme, a Department spokesperson said: “Outstanding payment applications are being reviewed at present and it is expected that there will be a number of cases which on review will not be due a payment.”
Speaking in the Dáil last Thursday, Sinn Fein’s spokesman on agriculture, deputy Martin Kenny, said farmers were in dire straits and called on Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed to pay all of the outstanding farmers, adding: “if there are problems they can be sorted out later.”
“I have come across farmers who have had to sell sheep to make ends meet, sheep they need to keep on the land to meet the requirements of the GLAS payment,” Kenny said.
“They are in dire straits and many of them are in debt. Bank managers are phoning them to find out where they can get their next payment and they do not understand that there is a technical hitch somewhere in the Department preventing farmers from getting their money.”
Pay now
His comments were echoed by Laura Johnston, president of the Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA) at its annual conference in Birr, Co Offaly, on Wednesday.
Johnston called on the Department of Agriculture to make payments to farmers now and do checks later.
The ACA head suggested that even a 50% payment would make a difference to farmers, “just something to maintain cashflow because these farmers were banking on it”.
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