The deadline for farmers to respond to two important checks under the 2024 Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) is imminent.

According to the Department of Agriculture, the first deadline of Thursday 20 June 2024 to respond to Area Monitoring System (AMS) notifications only concerns a small minority of farmers.

Nevertheless it is an opportunity to make corrections, where applicable, without penalty.

The first round of AMS notifications relate to the presence of artificial surfaces in a parcel that have not been identified.

These include for example buildings, farmyard extensions and farm roadways. Further rounds of AMS notifications will issue from July 2024 onwards.

Preliminary checks

The second deadline of Friday 21 June 2024 concerns BISS preliminary checks. This system will identify any over-claims, overlaps or dual claims, and notifications will issue on the back of these.

Where a farmer or an advisor receives a preliminary check notification, they should log on to www.agfood.ie to respond to such.

The correspondence relating to the above checks / notifications can be found in the correspondence section of your agfood.ie portal under the BISS portal.

Where a farmer is signed up for text message alerts, a text will have issued to advise them that they have a notification on their agfood.ie account.

Should farmers wish to contact the department they can do so at 057 867 4422 in relation to queries on their BISS and other area-based schemes application, preliminary checks notifications, AMS notifications.

For queries on registering for www.agfood.ie, for example queries on lost passwords, how to register etc, the helpline number is 049 436 8288.