A “substantial number” of the 3,600 farmers who are waiting for GLAS I and II payments may never receive their money, according to Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed.

This is despite many of the farmers investing between €3,000 and €4,000 each to complete measures such as hedge planting and sowing wild bird cover in anticipation of their GLAS payment.

Some farmers face the prospect of losing more than €25,000 they were banking on, based on five years’ GLAS payments and their outlay to date.

Responding to questions on GLAS delays at the IFA Brexit event on Monday, Minister Creed said a substantial number of the farmers who remain unpaid could be “ineligible”.

“We are dealing with a residual of less than 8% of the remaining applicants and it is likely that a substantial number of those will not have activated an application at all,” the Minister told the 650 delegates in Goffs.

Three days earlier, at a trade meeting in Cork, Minister Creed told the Irish Farmers Journal he could not elaborate on the exact number of farmers who would not be paid.

“We are down to the last 8% or 9%. There will be a significant portion of that cohort that are ineligible for one reason or another,” Minister Creed said. “They may never have activated their application after submitting it.”

However, Department of Agriculture officials have said that an examination of the three tranches of the previous agri-environment scheme indicates that, on average, approximately 4% of total applications were found to be ineligible.

If 4% of the outstanding GLAS I and II applicants are found to be ineligible, that would equate to around 1,460 farmers being left without any GLAS money.

Based on an average payment of €4,200 per year, consultants fees and, if they chose wild bird cover and hedgerows, an investment of €3,660, those farmers face missing out more than €25,000.

Agricultural Consultants Association president Laura Johnston described the revelation as “completely unacceptable”.

Read more

Full coverage: GLAS