In the Stormont Assembly chamber on Tuesday, MLAs finally approved the Farm Sustainability (Transitional Provisions) Regulations (NI) 2025.

While the name of the new law is cumbersome, it is actually an important piece of legislation, as it effectively gives DAERA the power to make area based payments to farmers in 2025 and also move on with introducing a new suckler cow scheme from 1 April.

The original plan was for the regulations to go before the Stormont Assembly last Tuesday. However, the process was delayed, in part because of an issue around the legal text and also because of concerns raised by the Stormont Agriculture committee relating to the end of the Young Farmers’ Payment and Regional Reserve.

In effect, 2025 is the last year that young farmers can avail of a top-up to area payments or new entrants can obtain entitlements from the regional reserve. Neither scheme is provided for in the new regulations beyond 2025.

Despite very low numbers coming forward in recent years (an average of 10 new entrants per year over the last decade), a number of members of the Stormont Agriculture committee were unwilling to give consent to the legislation, without this issue being addressed.

It actually got to the point that if the regulations had not been passed on Tuesday, there was a real risk of area payments being delayed from September to November and the suckler cow scheme not opening this year at all. In the end, MLAs from across various parties had little option, but to back down.

While their concerns have some validity, there is a much bigger issue in the regulations that has generally been missed.

Contained within the new regulations are various provisions that effectively give DAERA the power to move money about between schemes.

In effect, there is nothing to stop a current or future Agriculture Minister deciding to take a large slice off area payments and re-direct the money into agri-environment measures. Surely our MLAs would have wanted a say over that.