The lack of support for older farmers deciding what to do with their farmland and mapping queries were among the queries raised with the Agriculture Minister, Michelle O’Neill, when she addressed a public meeting in Lisnaskea on Thursday evening last.

The Minister was accompanied by DARD officials, Richard Crowe and Niall Donaghy, who outlined the main changes to the payment system being implemented this year. It was chaired by Michelle Gildernew, M.P. for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

There was standing room only as Michelle Gildernew referred to the large turnout of people and she explained how the Minister had engaged with hundreds and thousands of farmers at meetings across Northern Ireland.

The main thrust of the Minister and her officials was to encourage farmers to use the DARD website for information and use the online service for the payment application. Information on the CAP and all its components and answers to queries are now in its 12th edition and is updated regularly following new queries at meetings.

Following the power point presentation, both Richard Crowe and Niall Donaghy answered questions.

Councillor Stephen Huggett raised the problem for older farmers who might not have an heir. He wondered if DARD had thought about them if they wanted to rent out the land and establish the entitlements. Richard Crowe replied that it was the tenant farmer, who was actively farming who would establish the entitlements. This was very much a business decision and the owner had to weigh up the risks involved.

Another young farmer raised a point about those young farmers under 40 who were head of holding for five years or longer which he felt discriminated against them from higher rates of grant in the forthcoming Farm Improvement Scheme. The Minister agreed to look at this again and said she would be keen to support them.

One farmer said he had been inspected three times during 2014 and said the delay in payment was not acceptable for any business. The Minister, agreed that it should not have taken so long and agreed to look at the individual case.

She said: “Environment will be moved into DARD and there is an opportunity for us to look at inspections and we are reviewing that.” The Minister also announced that she hoped to open up the replacement for the Countryside Management Scheme from January next year.

When someone asked a if there was any support for suckler producers, the Minister replied that they would not have the money to deliver a package. The Republic of Ireland had a much bigger pot of funding. However she said there would be initiatives under the Farm Business Improvement Scheme to help with improving efficiency on farms.

Some people raised queries about maps not being accurate and difficulties encountered to have them corrected.

Richard Crowe replied that new maps will be issued to those who had queried information when the original maps were issued before Christmas and other mapping queries should be directed to staff at DARD Direct offices where there were several tiers of experienced staff there to help clients.

The powerpoint presentation was similar to that shown at other CAP meetings. One of the interesting features was examining entitlement value. They demonstrated how the values could be worked out using a simple calculation. If the pot of money from 2014 was 10,000 euro, and the eligible land to be claimed was 10 hectares, then the initiatl entitlement value was 10,000/10 = 1000. Subtracting the regional average of 329 will give the figure of 671 and when this is divided by 7(the number of years leading up to flat rate), this gives 95.85, a seventh of the difference. This 95.85 is subtracted from the initial 1000 to give the starting value in 2015. Over the following years, the amont decreases by 95.85 until reaching 329 in 2021.

For entitlement values going up, the calculation is similar.