Crunch charter issues as inspections start

With 6,500 land eligibility inspections to start next week, the Department of Agriculture and farm organisations are hoping to agree on the final crunch issues under the new Charter of Farmers Rights today (Thursday).

These include the wording for notice of inspections to clearly separate out no-notice inspections from notice inspections and clarification of the approach on minor non-compliance/yellow card system. The independent appeals system is also under the spotlight.

IFA president Eddie Downey said that significant progress had been made in getting more timely payments for all farm schemes, inspections and appeals.

“Delays in payments in the past have caused severe financial problems. This must be avoided in future as direct payments are such a vital part of farm income and farmers must be paid at a specific time each year for all schemes,” added

With the Charter of Rights discussions now reaching the final stages, the IFA has called on Minister for Agriculture Simon Conveney to intervene to address the outstanding issues.

No-notice inspections

There will continue to be no-notice inspections for food and animal welfare elements (see Table 1). However, they are likely to be separate from notice inspections, with the farmer having the option to allow the inspector to carry out all inspection during a single visit.

The IFA continues to push for a yellow card system for minor infringements, but the Department is arguing that this change from the current system would lead to more inspections and an increased risk of penalties for farmers.

As it currently stands, where minor infringements are found, farmers have a period to correct the issue, with less than 1% suffering a penalty for not fixing the minor breach. These tend to be mainly around tagging or broken rainwater chutes. Under a yellow card system, the Department says that farmers who receive a yellow card would be put in a higher-risk group, making repeat inspection more likely.

Overall, there are an increased number of inspections to be carried out this year (see Table 2). This is mainly due to the introduction of new schemes under CAP reforms, such as the young farmers top-up, where 5% of farmers have to be inspected.

Under greening, 10% of the 8,000 tillage farmers who must have Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) will be inspected this year, but this reduces to five percent once the EFA database is established in future years.

To try to reduce the number of duplicate inspections, a range of notice inspections will be integrated into one visit. Apart from no-notice inspections, the notice for existing inspections remains at either 48 hours or up to 14 days. The majority of the new Pillar II schemes will have up to 14 days notice. However, GLAS inspections will, it seems, be done without notice, with TAMS inspections having notice of up to 48 hours.

More random eligibility inspections

In 2015, selection for Basic Payment land eligibility inspections is 100% random, up from just 25% random last year. In the past, there were two methods by which inspection cases could be selected, ie randomly and by risk.

After all the issues with land eligibility, the results of 2015 inspections will prove an interesting snapshot of how farmers are complying. I have argued in the past that the random inspections should be used to identify the true level of penalties on Irish farms as they are not targeted to find higher-risk farms.

The data from 2014 was not available from the Department for random inspections, but figures from 2013 received by Denis Naughten TD in a parliamentary question show a huge variation between counties for random land eligibility inspections (see graph 1). On average, 11% of farmers randomly selected for inspection got hit with a financial penalty. This varies from a high of 23% in Clare to less than 4% for five counties, with two counties, Carlow and Louth, suffering zero penalties on random land eligibility inspections.

Looking at the figures, we see a trend that counties along the western seaboard, where there are more issues with marginal land, had a higher percentage of penalties. However, not all can be put down to this. For example, in Monaghan, one in five farmers suffered a penalty, but next door in Cavan just 3% of holdings inspected were hit with a financial penalty under land eligibility.

“We currently have a totally unacceptable situation where the county in which you farm has as much to do with the level of penalties you may face as the actual implementation of the Department of Agriculture rules,” TD Denis Naughten stated.

“These variations are nothing short of ludicrous and make a farce of the farm inspection system. Clearly, there needs to be regular updating of inspectors to ensure, in so far as is possible, that there is a consistent interpretation of the rules throughout the country.”

So if the Department, advisers and even the Irish Farmers Journal are doing their job correctly, the levels of penalties under random inspection should fall, not rise, over time.

Each year, after the inspection process is completed, a series of information meetings with farmers is needed to highlight frequent mistakes, ensuring that they are not repeated by other farmers the following year. That should be one measure of success for the Charter of Farmers Rights.