Farmers protest outside Davitt House over payment delays

Anton McNulty

Over 200 farmers from across the west of Ireland staged a protest outside the Department of Agriculture offices in Castlebar over delays in GLAS payments.
The protest was organised by the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association with members from across the country gathering outside Davitt House last Tuesday afternoon where they highlighted the continued delay in payments of GLAS to over 9,000 farmers.
It is understood that the delay is due to problems with the Department’s IT system and Vincent Roddy, the National Chair of INHFA, said this was unacceptable.
“It’s unacceptable that farmers should be penalised for the Department’s obvious inability to sort out its own internal inefficiencies. If necessary, experts in IT systems must be outsourced to sort out this mess. Farmers cannot wait any longer for their wages, what other sector in Irish society would put up with this.
“We intend to keep our promise and are staging a number of protests to highlight this matter starting here in Castlebar,” he said.
All GLAS applications must pass regulatory controls and validations, as is the case with all EU co-funded schemes. It is understood the outstanding cases relate to applications that did not pass these checks and in the majority of cases is due to a query on a selected GLAS action or a land parcel on their holding.
All of these cases must be reviewed on a case by case basis to determine if the actions involved should be removed from the scheme or allowed to proceed to payment.
Mr Roddy pointed out that a country with the supposed best IT capabilities in the world should be able to sort out such an issue.
A letter was handed into a Department official and another from the INHFA is being handed into the Taoiseach’s constituency office also.