The Agricultural Appeals Office has advised the Department of Agriculture to make the conditions of farm schemes “unambiguous”.

This is to help avoid farmer confusion, which could give rise to non-compliances and application refusals or penalties. In its annual report for 2023, the independent office recommended that clarity is brought to the conditions of schemes and their payment eligibility requirements.

The office called for scheme bulletins to be issued to farmers detailing the actions they must complete over each year to receive payment.

The circumstances deemed to meet the threshold needed to force majeure should be set out clearly. Clarity is needed on the calculation of scheme reference numbers when there is a change to herd ownership or a herd is restricted with disease over reference years, the office said.

The office also outlined which issues most commonly crop up with farmers found to be non-compliant with schemes.

These were late-tagging and/or registration of births, non-completion of animal movement notifications, not replacing missing tags and not ensuring agfood.ie login access or sufficient internet access when making scheme applications.