|
|
 |
You are > Home > Penalties must be on the map
|
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Penalties must be on the map
DRACONIAN penalties on map acre sites must be reversed, according to the IFA President John Bryan who has called on the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to address the issue.
Mr Bryan said existing penalties had been imposed on farmers where the Department of agriculture, Fisheries and Food have deemed that they had over-claimed for single farm payment and the disadvantaged areas scheme.
"The level of penalties being imposed on the farmers affected is excessive and will impact severely on farm incomes in 2010 and beyond," the IFA leader said.
"Backdating the penalties to 2005 is totally unfair and unacceptable as in most cases the farmer had declared the lands, which he had considered and was advised previously to be eligible for payment. Indeed the Department of Agriculture themselves has inspected this land and deemed it eligible in the past," Mr Bryan claimed.
He said that it is clear that ineligible areas such as houses, sites and roadways and farmyards have to be excluded from the single farm payment applications.
However, he said, it is unacceptable that the Department of Agriculture is applying a stricter interpretation of the criteria to exclude many areas that were included for payments in the past.
The IFA leader has called on Minister Brendan Smith to insist that his department refrain from penalising farmers and to set it in motion a resolution to this problem.
"The minister will have to go back to Brussels to argue that the penal retrospective approach where the department is going over five years is not acceptable," he said.
"Imposing the penalties on farmers dependent on the direct payment system and living on unacceptably low incomes without having recourse to rectify the problem is not acceptable," Mr Bryan said.
Main News Page |
Previous Page
|
|
|
|
