Reclaim on ineligible land to be less than €400

No more than €400 in pre-2013 refunds are being levied on farmers found to have over-claimed payments for ineligible land this year.

But there may be trouble ahead in 2014 for other over-claim cases.

“We are not asking for any retrospective payments from farmers who have had a big problem,” said Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney. “The only payments we decided we would try to reclaim retrospectively this year, to try to solve the problem, are from farmers whose ineligible land amounted to less than 3% of their holding. The average farmer in this category has a single farm payment of well over €11,000 and the retrospective payment, in total, is well under €400.”