Stacking is overdone, says Agriculture official
The top level official in the single payment section of the Department, has claimed that “stacking” was never envisaged on the scale it has now reached.
Stacking of entitlements enables farmers to claim 100% of their entitlements, while retaining as little as 50% of the land on which the entitlements were earned during the 2000 to 2002 reference years.
At an IFJ/RTE seminar on the single payment in Carlow, Mr McGarrigle warned that the Department has learned of situations which were not provided for within the scheme, and could make a “mess of the whole situation.”
Some farmers, he added, are planning on signalling their intention to stack their payments, by divesting of rented land. But they will then continue to rent the land at a reduced rent but will exclude it from their Area Aid Applications. This would be “totally wrong”, Mr McGarrigle warned.
“Stacking was introduced to cover two or three main categories. The first was people who planted land during or since the reference period, and that land is gone for ever. “The second category is dairy farmers who had to lease in land to get milk quota during the reference period, and that lease is no longer there.
“The third one that we catered for was people, particularly in the east of the country, where they were busy building roads, and people had to give up land under compulsory purchase order.
"Stacking only came about after the political agreement was reached, which was in June, 2003. We did not get agreement on stacking until March 2004, but everybody is looking at it now,” he added
“I would not have any difficulty with people stacking, if they fit into the categories, but I’m afraid there are some situations which are coming to my notice where it does not seem to have merit.
“I would be concerned that people will say they are going to stack their land, but, in reality, they continue renting in the land and getting it a bit cheaper, not putting it on their area aid application, and there is a kind of pretence of stacking.
“I would be worried about that situation, because if we come across that in the Department, it makes a mess of the whole situation,” he said.
There is increasing concern around the country that entitlement to stack payments will seriously reduce demand for rented land, and will result in large areas being left dormant this year. Entitlements from land which was sold since the reference period cannot be stacked on the remaining land.
