No Christmas cheque for some from Ireland’s SFP

IT’S been an historic week in Irish farming, as EU Single Payment cheques dropped through the letterboxes of 80,000 farm homes. For the first time, direct aid, financed by the EU, was paid to farmers independent of production.

For a small number of farmers, receiving between €3,000 and €10,000 per week, it’s a bonanza.

For the vast majority, who received less than €100 per week, it is small compensation for product price cuts, and is unlikely to dramatically change their lives.

For thousands of land owners deemed ineligible for any payment, it has been a sad week, deprived of their share by the Government decision to opt for a retrospectively-based scheme.

These landowners didn’t qualify because they had not earned EU direct aid in the relevant three years. The stacking option for leased or let land added insult to injury.

Even a small payment would have improved their living standards; instead, huge cheques go to the wealthiest landowners.

Few of the 25 EU member states have chosen a similar Single Payment allocation to the Irish system. Most of the countries attached payment to land or to production, but huge tracts of Irish farmland has been left without a Single Payment entitlement, often because of family or health circumstances beyond the landowner’s control. An un-announced retrospective base was chosen to determine future income. Income for the next 10 years was set at the level of three years ago.

Paying so called ‘armchair’ farmers might not have been socially acceptable, but allocating entitlements to the person farming every acre in the country, varying regionally if necessary, was an option available to the Government. It would have avoided much confusion and complexity, and been fairer.