The President of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, Harry Sinclair has welcomed the announcement made by the DARD Minister, Michelle O’Neill to proceed with a process which provides Single Farm Payment (SFP) claimants with the opportunity to have their SFP entitlements recalculated to exclude ineligible land which was claimed on in 2005 when the SFP system was introduced.
Speaking after the announcement, Harry Sinclair said: “This is an issue which the UFU has been pursuing for many years. The interpretation of what type of land is eligible for SFP has changed since this scheme was first implemented in 2005 with DARD’s revision of land eligibility in 2007 causing many difficulties. We have repeatedly raised this issue with our DARD Ministers over this period but at long last progress has been made”.
“Many SFP claimants had claimed on land in 2005 which was subsequently clarified as being ineligible. This meant that in some cases individual’s historic payments were initially spread across more entitlements than what is now considered to be eligible land, which meant that they were not able to draw down all of their entitlements and consequently lost considerable amounts of SFP since then”.
“The opportunity which is now being provided by the Minister to all current SFP entitlement holders would allow these individual historic funds to be reallocated to currently eligible land only provided that it is recognised by the claimant and subsequently confirmed by DARD that the land now being excluded was ineligible in 2005. DARD would then recalculate the SFP entitlements and would pay out any additional funding associated with the unclaimed historic element of the SFP but would also recover any excess payments of the area element of entitlements which had already been made on this ineligible land”.
Harry Sinclair concluded: “Against this background it is important that each individual weighs up the possible financial gains and losses associated with this recalculation opportunity before deciding on whether or not to proceed as everyone’s circumstances will be different. The Union is available to help its members with this process. Letters will be issued by DARD soon and the closing date for applications is 6 September”.
