DAERA regulations hit with a delay

Agriculture Minister Andrew Muir was unable to move a motion in the Stormont Assembly chamber on Tuesday that would have been the final stage in getting regulations relating to new farm payments into law.

The draft Farm Sustainability (Transitional Provisions) Regulations (NI) 2025 were due to be debated by MLAs. However, that process has effectively been delayed a week.

The delay was due to a failure by DAERA to get the draft regulations before the Stormont Agriculture committee last Thursday, after the Examiner of Statutory Rules identified some technical issues with the documentation.

That will have a knock-on impact on other pieces of legislation, including draft regulations relating to the new suckler cow scheme which is due to commence from 1 April 2025. That draft legislation is now likely to be presented to the committee on Thursday 20 February.