January 23 is deadline for payment appeals
Confirmation of individual farmer entitlements under the Fischler CAP Review is likely to be delayed for several months.
It is estimated that up to 50,000 cases under appeal will have to be processed by the Department, before the payment allocations are decided for each farmer in the country.
These ‘force majeure’ cases are also likely to result in a larger reduction in payments to other farmers than had been expected initially.
The Department has been inundated with a flood of phone calls and letters from farmers. numbering hundreds per day. Hundreds of written enquiries have also been submitted to the Department offices at Portlaoise.
Under the terms of the Fischler Mid Term Review of the CAP, farmers are entitled to have circumstances outside of their control which affected their draw down of payments during the reference years of 2000, 2001 and 2002 taken into account in determining their entitlement under the single payment.
Farmers whose entitlement was seriously affected during one or more of the Reference Years are entitled to appeal to have their single payment based on the remaining year or years. In certain cases, where all of the Reference Years were affected, they may apply to have 1997 to 1999 accepted as the Reference Years for their entitlement.
Situations set out under the Regulation as force majeure include the death of the farmer; long term professional incapacity of a farmer; a severe natural disaster which affected output on the farm; accidental destruction of livestock buildings; or a disease outbreak affecting all or part of the herd.
Details of force majeure cases must be sent to the Department at Portlaoise by January 23, with support documentation, on the application forms which are available from local Department of Agriculture offices.
The help line number for enquiries is 1890 200 566. The lines are open Monday to Friday, from 9.15 am. to 1pm, and from 2.15pm to 5.30pm.
