Farmers facing wipe-out following latest wave of Department inspections
MORE than 300 farmers turned up to a meeting in South Galway at which they heard the devastating news that they could lose thousands of euro in payments.
Farmers with commonages in the areas of Slieve Aughty, Derrybrien and Peterswell fear that their entitlements will be eroded by the Department of Agriculture.
Pressure is now being applied on the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to intervene so that commonages can be maintained and not become overgrown.
It has been claimed that in some cases farmers who graze commonage in South Galway area could lose as much as €6,000 in Disadvantaged Areas Scheme payment.
That is a significant part of their annual income from agriculture. The average farm income is around €25,000.
In the case of the commonage in Castledaly, the area of land from which they claimed payments has been reduced from 97% to 42% – eroding the incomes of some 80 farmers in the process.
Cllr. Joe Byrne from Kinvara said that there were a lot of angry farmers out there and many who feel that their livelihood is in jeopardy.
He said that the Department were using aerial photography to justify why they were reducing the eligible areas for claiming farm payments.
If the Department were to apply the same criteria across the West of Ireland where there are thousands of acres of commonage, many farmers would be put on the breadline.
Cllr. Byrne said that a large portion of commonage was located in Special Areas of Conservation and that this was being removed from the eligible areas for claiming. This is something that the IFA were resisting.
Farmers in Connemara and West Mayo, where there are huge tracts of commonage, are facing crippling reductions in their farm payments from the Department of Agriculture.
Last year there was uproar in the Slieve Aughty area when 50 commonage farmers had their payments held up as a result of inspections carried out.
For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.