One in four farmers inspected under cross compliance penalised

One in four farmers who received a Department of Agriculture cross-compliance inspection in 2023 had their Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) and other payments penalised.

A total of 1,352 cross-compliance inspections were carried out by the Department in 2023, the last year for which full figures are available.

Of this number, 365 farmers had a penalty applied to their payments on foot of these inspections.

However, these figures do not include the cross reporting of non-compliances by State agencies to the Department or Department checks carried out on behalf of local authorities.

The severity of sanctions applied varied from 1% to 100% and the factors generally taken into consideration when deciding on the penalty included whether a breach was unintentional and whether the farmer had previous scheme non-compliances.

Some minor non-compliances found during checks do not attract a sanction when rectified in an appropriate timeframe.

There were four more farmers who refused inspection in 2023 and these were handed a 100% BISS penalty.

Another 552 Department inspections were conducted on behalf of county councils focused on water quality and penalties arising from these inspections are not included in the sanction figure list above.

Fewer inspections

An additional 2,662 farmers were identified as having breached their stocking rate limits (both non-derogation and derogation farmers) in 2023 which also carries a penalty.

The number of cross-compliance inspections carried out on the farms of 2024 BISS participants dropped after changes at EU-level dropped the need for inspections or penalties on farms below 10ha in receipt of CAP payments.

This change resulted in 1,105 inspections for 2024 applications, a decrease of 18% on the previous year.

The Department has said it expects to carry out a similar number of 2025 inspections as it did in 2024.

Area monitoring

The introduction of the area monitoring system (AMS) in 2023 saw on-the-spot land eligibility inspections replaced with the eye in the sky.

AMS notifications issued in 2023 related to potential identification of an incorrect crop declared in a land parcel or the potential presence of multiple crops in the same where only one of them had been declared, as well as the presence of ineligible features, like houses or farm roadways which were not delineated from the parcel in the application.

Follow-up AMS inspections were carried out with 2,103 herdowners in 2023 for these notification types.

Six farmers received penalties on foot of AMS checks in that year.

Common pitfalls

Cross-compliance inspections check if farmers are abiding by Statutory Management Requirements (SMR) and Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC).

The most common areas of non-compliance were in SMR 2 relating to the pollution of water by nitrates and GAEC 8 which concerns biodiversity.

The most common non-compliances identified by the Department for the main SMR and GAEC are outlined in Table 1.