Elliott flags up Entitlement Concerns
Ulster Unionist Agriculture and Rural Development spokesman, Tom Elliott MLA, has raised concerns that farm businesses are being advised to accept erroneous entitlement statements by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD). The issue has been brought to the attention of Mr Elliott by a worried farmer who revealed that the phenomenon is being blamed on inadequacies in the computer software used by the department.
The Fermanagh and South Tyrone assemblyman continued by recounting the experience of the farm business, which experienced a delay in SFP even though a full field inspection found no irregularities.
Tom explained: “The farmer in question had rightly expected that his money would not face a delay because of the inspection result, however this was not the case. In March DARD mailed a total of 9 different entitlement statements to the farmer with a range of entitlement figures, the most recent of these has an allocation 5 hectares over the correct entitlement.
“From what I can understand DARD are advising that the farmer just accepts this figure and have blamed the problem on the computer software. As you can imagine the farmer is concerned that this issue, through no fault of his own, will lead to penalties and problems further down the line. Apparently there are other businesses in the same situation, and the uncertainty regarding the future implications of this are causing them significant worry.”
In conclusion Tom added: “Since the single Farm Payment (SFP) came into being a few years ago farm businesses have been repeatedly penalised for minor errors, to now have department staff giving this type of advice is wholly irresponsible.
“This farmer has done nothing wrong, in fact the inspection showed that he had been more than thorough with regards his SFP application, however it now appears that even that is not sufficient to prevent problems.
“If there was some form of open and transparent admission that there was indeed a problem then this could be remedied more effectively, but having a department that flatly refuses to accept its own fallibility makes such a scenario impossible.”