Organic farmers are being discriminated against when it comes to payments despite recommendations from the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture in 2015, according to the Organic Farmers Representative Body.

The body has voiced its concern at the lack of Organic Farm Scheme (OFS) payments issued for 2017.

In a letter to the Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed, it said that "organic farmers are discriminated against despite recommendations from the Oireachtas Committee in 2015", which said that "the [Department of Agriculture] ensure that no payments are delayed this year as they were in 2014".

The letter also went on to say: "This is an ongoing yearly problem for organic farmers as the 85% should be paid within the calendar year and the balancing payments to issue in the following January.

"We are now told that the balance of last year’s will not issue until the end of May 2018 and a large number of organic farmers have not received the 85% of 2017 payments."

Payments

The letter was in response to a statement from the Department which said: "Advance payments have been held up because of a validation issue within the scheme. Our IT staff are currently working on ‘fixes’ to get these issues cleared up as soon as possible."

There is no fault with applications, there is nothing needed to send to the GLAS section, it is just a matter of our side getting the necessary fixes in place

"We hope to have all advance payments issued as quickly as possible."

The body pointed out that the lack of payments also imposed unnecessary hardship on farming families "especially coming up to Christmas".

It also suggested that if there is a problem with the IT system, that manual payments should be made to all unpaid farmers until the issue is sorted.

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