IFA Welcomes Preliminary Checking System for Area Aid Applications
IFA Deputy President Richard Kennedy has welcomed the preliminary checking system for the Basic Payment Scheme, announced by the Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed.
Encouraging farmers and advisors to use the system, Richard Kennedy said this is a very useful tool to enable farmers and advisers to resolve problems with dual claims, overclaims and overlaps on their application online and before any penalty.
He said IFA met with Department officials in Portlaoise today for a trial run of the new system, “The preliminary system is part of Commissioner Hogan’s CAP simplification agenda. This new online system is one of the real benefits from simplification and this must be followed up with further measures.”
Richard Kennedy said the system allows the Department of Agriculture to introduce pre-checks for online BPS applications and to notify applicants of any non-compliances in the areas of overclaims, dual claims and overlaps. He said farmers and their agents can rectify any such non-compliance by the deadline date of June 20th with no penalty applied, where the non-compliance is fully rectified.
The IFA Deputy President said when the system identifies a dual claim, overclaim or overlap, a notification will be sent on the BPS online system. Farmers and advisors need to check their BPS online account. In addition, farmers signed up fort txt message alerts, will receive a text to advise of a notification.
The IFA Deputy President said 100,000 farmers have applied for the BPS online this year – up from 80,000 in 2014 and 93,000 in 2015. He said, “The move to online application is positive as it reduces errors and speeds up processing at the Department of Agriculture. In addition, on line applicants no also have the benefit from the preliminary checking system introduced this week.”
Richard Kennedy called for all outstanding payments to be issued immediately including the 3% balancing payment for 2015, as well as repayment of the crisis reserve and unused National Reserve funds. He said in total around €50m is due to farmers.
