Farmers facing financial difficulties and who are unable to make repayments under the Beef Exceptional Aid Measure (BEAM) have been urged to contact the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM). According to the department over 34,500 farmers applied for BEAM at its closing date of 20 September 2019, with €78 million in payments issued to participating farmers.
However, some 11,000 BEAM participants did not meet some, or all, of the commitments set out in the terms and conditions of the scheme. As a result, recoupment of almost €18 million in overpayments has commenced.
Farm organisations have been calling for leniency around the repayment timeframes to help farmers who may be struggling to pay bills. In a recent parliamentary question from Fine Gael TD, Colm Burke, to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, more repayment time for farmers, to improve their cashflow situation in the short-term, in view of the recent “unprecedented inflation costs of fertiliser, fuel and feed in the agricultural sector”.
The department says that approximately 22,000 participants did meet all the commitments set out in BEAM but 11,000 did not meet some or all of them. Minister McConalogue says “as an accredited EU paying agency, my department must recover debts in respect of overpayments and penalties across a broad range of agricultural schemes, including the BEAM scheme.”
The Minister states that, “Debt recovery may be facilitated by means direct repayment by the debtor or through deductions from other payments due.”