Time is ticking on the protection of farmers’ Areas of Natural Constraint (ANC) payments. A heated meeting of some 300 farmers, organised by the IFA, in Carrick-on-Shannon last Friday heard that a new ANC programme must be signed off by the Government and sent to Brussels by the end of next year. If the new programme is not complete by 2018, the 95,000 farmers receiving ANC payments will have their payments slashed by 20% in that year.

The Department of Agriculture will publish draft maps of what land it will remove from being classed disadvantaged in the spring. Some 75% of the country is currently classed as being disadvantaged.

ANC, formerly the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme payment, is a critical payment for farmers. Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal, IFA president Joe Healy said direct payments were particularly important this year, given tough farmgate prices.

“Farmers had their handout for that ANC money,” he said. “It had been such a tough year with almost every commodity selling under the cost of production, the weather in the springtime and into the summer ... there was no income coming in. The ANC is the one payment we get that we don’t have to pay planners or pay vets,” he added.

Healy said he and the IFA will fight “tooth and nail” to ensure the overall ANC budget is increased to €250m.

Listen to an interview with Joe Healy at the 1966 commemoration this week in our podcast below:

Listen to "Joe Healy on next year's ANC review" on Spreaker.

Speaking at the meeting last week, Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness said there is a “real fear that some areas will lose out in the disadvantaged area review”.

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