About 55,000 farmers will be able to receive early payments under two of the three existing EU rural environment protection schemes (Reps) under a deal struck in Brussels yesterday.
But payments made under the new funding scheme, known as Reps 4, may be delayed by almost a year due to tough new regulations imposed by the European Commission.
Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan said the commission had agreed to allow her department to resume the payments, which are made to farmers that agree to undertake measures to protect the environment. The payments have been suspended since January as the commission sought to allow more scrutiny of applications, leading one farmer in Limerick, Donal O'Brien, to stage a hunger strike over his frozen payment.
But following talks with agriculture commissioner Marian Fischer Boel yesterday in Brussels, Ms Coughlan said payments could resume for farmers in the Reps 2 and 3 programmes. The decision means that €37 million on hold can now be released.
"I am very grateful to Commissioner Fischer Boel for her personal intervention to resolve an extremely difficult situation," said Ms Coughlan. "I had emphasised to her the seriousness with which I viewed the matter, and the risk of damaging Irish farmers' confidence in a popular and extremely successful scheme which has delivered real benefits to society as a whole in terms of landscape, biodiversity and water quality.
"For the past 14 years farmers applying for funding under the Reps schemes have received a cheque in the post six to eight weeks after making an initial application. The early payment was in recognition that many of the environmental programmes [ such as planting hedges, leaving hedges uncut or fencing off cattle from rivers or streams] they had pledged to undertake would require substantial upfront investment from farmers."
But in January the commission challenged the early payment system established by the Department of Agriculture and set forth new regulations, which if strictly applied, would mean the farmers in Reps 4 would get 75 per cent of their payments each year after the administrative processing of applications made under the single payments scheme. The balance would only be released when on-farm inspections where complete in December.
However, Irish MEPS united in Strasbourg last night to warn the European Commission that anger over late payments under the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme could rebound on the commission in the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Colm Burke MEP (Fine Gael) said even if the dispute was resolved, there was palpable anger in the Irish farming community as about 6,000 farmers who had already lodged their Reps applications had been led to believe they would "not now receive payment until October".
He added that those who were due to receive payment after April 1st next, had been told they would not receive their payments until 2009. Mr Burke told The Irish Times the level of payments differs but added that a simple average would be about €8,000 per farmer. His Fine Gael colleague Maireád McGuinness MEP said the situation raised the question of why the Department of Agriculture suspended payments in the first place.
Independent MEP Marian Harkin also raised the issue of the Lisbon Treaty and commented that "causing a row over Reps payments at this time was a very stupid move on somebody's part".
One of the strongest warnings came from Fine Gael's Avril Doyle MEP who asked the commission "not to pick a fight on the issue of the Reps payments to farmers".
At the meeting in Brussels, agriculture ministers also raised concerns over recent progress in the long-delayed Doha negotiations to finalise a world trade deal.
French farm minister Michael Barnier said that 20 EU states had rejected compromise proposals on agriculture recently put forward by a senior WTO official in an attempt to kickstart talks. "What is being prepared is a bad deal," Mr Barnier said after farm ministers of 20 of the 27 EU states met in Brussels.Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern also raised objections to the plan at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels yesterday.