Cross-border transactions are threatening to delay the launch of the National Fertiliser Database.

The Irish Farmers Journal understands that serious concerns have been raised by industry stakeholders regarding how purchases from Northern Ireland can be recorded by the database.

The new database aims to register all on-farm fertiliser purchases from January 1, 2023.

However, a number of fertiliser importers and wholesalers have warned at meetings of the Stakeholder Consulative Committee on the database that the new register will be inoperable without the participation of merchants in Northern Ireland.

Merchants have asked how purchases from Northern Ireland can be policed, and questioned the credibility and usefulness of the database in the absence of import records.

Concerns

Fears that northern businesses would have a competitive advantage if southern buyers could avoid registering purchases by buying in the North have also been expressed by industry stakeholders.

One industry source, who did not wish to be named, claimed that merchants on the northern side of the border would be “flat out” if the fertiliser register goes ahead on a ‘Republic-only’ basis.

A senior official within the fertiliser sector maintained that the database proposal was likely to be delayed due to the mounting concerns around imports from Northern Ireland.

Major concerns have also been expressed by merchants regarding the requirement that information on all fertiliser sales would be registered ‘in real time’ with the proposed Department of Agriculture database.

“Getting the computer systems to talk to one another is just going to be a nightmare. What are smaller merchants supposed to do,” one Munster merchant asked.

The Department contends that the fertiliser database will enable Ireland to meet its commitments to the European Commission regarding the extension of the nitrates derogation.

The register will also help provide a more realistic picture of where fertiliser is being applied by tracking sales, it maintains.