Up to 54,500 farmers who hold entitlements above the national average of €260/ha face a wipeout of their direct payments in the next CAP, under convergence and eco-scheme proposals.

New modelling analysis from the Department of Agriculture has spelt out the implications for three different farmers holding entitlements ranging from €160/ha to €400/ha.

Farmer A, holding an entitlement worth €400/ha in 2019, will see this plummet to €271/ha in 2023, a fall of almost a third. The payment will reduce by a further 5% annually to €233/ha over the lifetime of the next CAP.

Farmer B, with entitlements worth €300/ha, will see theirs fall to €210 in 2023, a 30% reduction. Over the next three years to 2026 a further €10/ha will be taken off, leaving a final figure of €200/ha.

Farmer C, who holds the current minimum entitlement value of €160/ha, will experience an initial 22% reduction in their payment, cutting it to €125/ha, before it rises again to €161/ha by 2026.

If all farmers were receiving payments on 32ha, the overall impact on Farmer A would be a 42% reduction from €12,800 to €7,500, a 33% reduction for Farmer B from €9,600 to €6,400, and a 0.5% increase for Farmer C from €5,120 to €5,140.

The largest impact on all three hypothetical farms is the ring-fencing of 25% of direct payment funds for eco-schemes. This is likely to be the final figure reached by negotiators in Brussels.

It will separate out €297m from Ireland’s €1.18bn direct payment budget for climate and environment measures. The budget for providing direct income supports would be €837m.All farmers will have an opportunity to access eco-schemes to increase their payments but they will be paid on a flat-rate basis, meaning those on larger payments contribute more. A farmer is also not guaranteed to receive an eco-scheme payment.

For the 59,500 farmers with below-average entitlements, these schemes will present a further avenue to potentially increase their payments.

Convergence in the Department’s modelling has been set at 85%, which is the most likely figure to be agreed when the new CAP package is signed off.

The Department’s model also includes a €24m allocation for young farmers, €3m for coupled income support which is used to fund the protein crop scheme, and €26m for the national reserve.