Transfers of thousands of Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) entitlements by sale or lease must be completed online this year, the Department of Agriculture has said.

More than €23.5m worth of BPS entitlements were leased between farmers last year.

A total of 118,382 individual entitlements worth a total of €23,557,793 were subject to lease in 2017. The average value of those leased entitlements was €198.99.

A further 9,623 entitlements were sold in 2017, amounting to €1,617,152 or an average of €168 per entitlement.

The Department of Agriculture does not record how much individual farmers paid for each entitlement, which is usually a multiple of the value of the entitlement.

This year for the first time, all parties to the transfer of entitlement application must have registered to use the online system.

Applications to transfer entitlements can be submitted directly by the parties to the transfer, a spokesperson for the Department told the Irish Farmers Journal.

However, the submission of applications to transfer entitlements can also be done by an agricultural adviser, auctioneer or solicitor, provided they are registered to use the online system.

Step-by-step training videos on how to submit transfer entitlements online will be available online shortly on www.agriculture.gov.ie.

The deadline for the submission of 2018 transfer of entitlements applications is midnight on Tuesday 15 May 2018.

Farmers in Northern Ireland have been required to trade entitlements online since 2017.

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