Cork tops payment list
Second is Tipperary with €100 million (see table below).
In both counties the top 20% of recipients get 52% of the Single Payment. But this is a relatively flat distribution, according to Farmsubsidy.org, an organisation which aims to make farm subsidy data available to all EU citizens.
The organisation says payments are more heavily concentrated in the hands of the very largest farms in many other parts of the EU.
The Government has released this full Single Payment Scheme list for 2005 to Farmsubsidy.org, but with one critical omission — the names of the recipients.
The names of the top 100 recipients, and the most recent national information, was released to farmsubsidy.org network member and freelance journalist Annamarie Cumisky.
The new information reveals that only four Irish recipients get more than €300,000 per year.
There is a zero payment to 72 recipients, and 2,205 gets less than €200.
Previously, the Irish Government had only released the names of the top 100 recipients of farm subsidies, after individually writing to each recipient to ask whether they had any objection to disclosure.
However, by April 30, 2009, each member state is required by new EU rules to set up a website allowing the public to view payments by name, location and amounts received.
