“It’s extremely important that all participants remain eligible for their payments after the review, given the severe challenges facing primary producers – falling prices, income volatility and reduced profitability in most sectors,” the Donegal TD said in a statement this Monday.

The Government has until the end of this year to submit a revised map of the areas covered by the scheme to the European Commission. The Department of Agriculture is expected to submit initial draft maps this spring, followed by a public consultation. Under EU rules, failure to submit a new map by the end of this year would lead to cuts in ANC funding next year.

A long negotiating process between 2005 and 2013 concluded with an EU-wide agreement that ANCs should be designated according to scientific soil and climate criteria impairing agricultural productivity, with some fine tuning allowed to reflect areas where technologies such as drainage have overcome those natural constraints.

The new definition is more restrictive than in the past and there are widespread fears that some of the nearly 100,000 Irish farmers currently eligible to ANC will lose access to the scheme.

Level of payments

The level of payments is also up for discussion. Following cuts during the financial crisis, the scheme’s budget currently stands at just over €200m. At the end of last year, the Department had delivered €194m in ANC payments to 90,000 farmers for 2016.

“Restoring ANC payments to 2007 levels remains a key Fianna Fáil policy,” McConalogue said. “It is also my view that increased ANC payments should reflect the natural constraint of each land type, by taking environmental designations into account when assessing natural constraint.”

The current programme for government includes a commitment to add €25m to the ANC budget in 2018. McConalogue has called for these extra funds to be targeted to those farmers with the most severely constrained land, such as mountainous ground.

The IFA has called for the scheme’s budget to be increased to €250m.

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Full coverage: Areas of Natural Constraint