240 farmers pocket €100k each under EU scheme

More than 240 farmers each received over €100,000 last year from the EU under the single farm payment (SFP) scheme.

The biggest winners were in Meath, where 39 farmers pocketed €100,000 or more under the scheme. Thirty farmers in Cork, 23 in Tipperary, and 18 in Kildare also received in excess of €100,000.

Figures from the Department of Agriculture show a further 416 farmers were paid between €75,000 and €100,000, while 1,390 farmers received payments of between €50,000 and €75,000 in 2011.

In all, more than 2,000 farmers — almost 1.7% of the 124,000 farmers nationwide — received payments of over €50,000 from Brussels.

A breakdown of the figures shows almost half of all farmers received between €2,000 and €5,000 from the scheme, while 18% of farmers received less than €2,000.

The SFP, which replaced a number of sometimes complex payment schemes, was introduced in 2005 to facilitate an easier application process and reduce the administrative burden on farmers.

Irish farmers receive an average of €1.8bn in direct payments from the EU each year, of which over €1.2bn is paid via the SFP.

The figures, released in reply to a parliamentary question from Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins, show that Cork, Tipperary, Kildare, Wexford, Kilkenny, Waterford, and Laois dominate payments of over €50,000 to farmers.

In contrast, none of over 10,200 farmers in Sligo, Monaghan, and Longford received a six-figure sum under the SFP scheme.

At the other end of the scale, farmers from Galway, Mayo, and Donegal account for more than a third of the 22,278 farmers who receive payments of less than €2,000. One third of the 8,000 farmers in Donegal are in the lowest-paid category.

Almost 10% of farmers in Tipperary, Waterford, and Kilkenny received less than €2,000.

The figures show Cork has the most farmers of any county with 12,847, followed by Galway (11,866), and Mayo (11,338). Dublin has the lowest number of farmers with just 622.

The figures show that 221 farmers across the Republic are entitled to payments in excess of €1,000 per hectare — with 20% of the total based in Cork. A fifth of all farmers receive payments based on a rate of less than €100 per hectare.

* https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ai-AIXUHj3KFdF91QXRHYnQ0UWt2Z0ZKYjF5UW1qSWc#gid=0