Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I welcome Pauline Rooney, acting director of EU area-based schemes; Richard Crowe, head of the countryside management unit; Teresa O'Neill, area-based schemes payments development; Sharon McFlynn, head of the area-based reform branch; and Jason Foy, head of the single farm payment branch. I ask you to start by briefly outlining each of the presentations and the format of your briefing. I understand that you will pause after each presentation to take questions from members.

Ms Pauline Rooney (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development): Thank you, Chair. I will make a few brief opening remarks and then we will go into the presentations. As you said, we will stop after each of the three presentations to take questions.

New common agricultural policy reform schemes are being introduced this year. That means that the single farm payments (SFP) are being replaced by what are termed direct payments. Those are the basic payment scheme, the greening payment and, for some, the young farmers' payment. We also have a proposed areas of natural constraint (ANC) scheme on the single application form (SAF), which replaces the old less-favoured areas compensatory allowance (LFACA).

Direct payments build on the foundations of the single farm payment, so a lot of things that are familiar from the old scheme will remain. The vast majority of applicants, who are active farmers, should be able to apply for the basic payment scheme (BPS) and meet their greening requirements with relative ease. It should be a relatively familiar and straightforward process for them.

Our first key milestone is the opening of the SAF application period later this week when the online service becomes available. We are currently engaged in a series of public meetings with farmers where we are outlining the key points of the schemes and the application processes. We are also making information, guidance and decision-making tools available on the DARD website, which is our primary channel for communication with farmers. We continually update the website with new information and guidance on the schemes. We have established a question-and-answer document, to which we add new questions when asked, making it a useful resource for those other than the person who asked the question. There are also query email addresses: a general one and another specifically for greening queries. A telephone helpline number is also advertised on the website. The website is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For farmers who are not able to use or uncomfortable with the website, or phoning, information is available through the DARD Direct offices during office hours.

We are encouraging farmers to act early. Typically, 80% of applications are received in the last two weeks of the application period. It is in farmers' interests, and ours, for us to start processing their applications as early as practicable because that will save time later on. We are encouraging farmers to think about their applications at an early stage to avoid congestion at the end of the application period. We do not want this, but if farmers leave thinking about their applications until the last week or so, congestion could happen. If you have the opportunity, I ask that you encourage your constituents to think early about their applications.

The vast majority of active farmers should, as I said, be able to make their direct payment applications with relative ease. A small proportion of applicants will be young farmers or new entrants, and they will have to make an additional registration or application. Genuine candidates should be able to readily demonstrate that they meet the requirements. The guidance on the website sets out the evidence that they need to provide by the deadline of 15 May. It is important that they consider what they need to do early so that they do not run out of time.

Farmers need to carefully consider the land that they declare; it needs to be all the land that is eligible and that they are actively using. Their maps will aid them, but they have a responsibility to think beyond that and deduct areas that are ineligible due, for example, to bracken, rush or heather growth. They should also not claim for land that they have control of but do not use practically for their business.

Given that the land parcel identification system (LPIS) is now compliant with EU requirements, there is little scope for recalculation of entitlements, as happened under the last CAP reform. Where ineligible land is found to be claimed for, farmers will be more affected by the penalties. Also, as we introduce a systematic review of maximum eligible areas (MEAs) and refresh LPIS data over the coming years, a much larger proportion of farmers will be exposed to potential payment reductions and penalties for claiming on ineligible land than those impacted by inspections.

The final point that I would like to make is that, to protect the integrity of the EU funding in line with EU and national priorities, we will have to be thorough in our assessment of applications. That includes the implementation of active farmer controls and testing the genuineness of young farmer and regional reserve applications. Where only genuine active farmer, young farmer and regional reserve applications are received, the administrative burden will be relatively easily managed. If we receive a high volume of potentially questionable applications, they will take time to consider and will slow down administration. That is in no one's interests. Again, when you have the opportunity, I ask you to use your influence to encourage only genuine applications to the scheme.

We will now proceed with the first presentation, which, essentially, covers the nuts and bolts of the new schemes and the rules for the new direct payments. I will hand over to Sharon.

Ms Sharon McFlynn (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development): As Pauline said, this presentation will take you through each of the payments under CAP reform. In 2015, we are looking at the basic payment scheme, the greening payment, and the young farmers' payment. To be eligible to claim the basic payment in 2015, there are three questions that potential applicants must ask themselves. Did you claim single farm payment in 2013? Do you have at least 3 hectares of eligible land? Will you be an active farmer in 2015? We expect the majority of claimants to answer yes to those questions.

It is very important to note that only the active farmer will have a right to establish entitlements and receive payment under the basic payment scheme in 2015. The active farmer must have at least 3 hectares of eligible land at their disposal on 15 May 2015, but the land that they are claiming for must also be eligible throughout the calendar year. It is also important to note that applicants must declare their entire holding, including land taken in conacre, because non-declaration of land can lead to penalties.

To be eligible for the basic payment scheme, the declared land needs to meet all the eligibility criteria. Fields must be larger than 0·1 hectares; have eligible vegetation and be in agricultural use; be kept in a state suitable for grazing or cultivation; and have agricultural activity carried out on the entire area being claimed for on a significant and regular basis during the calendar year of the claim, in this case 2015.

It is important to note that nitrates controller agreements under the nitrates action programme were no longer applicable from 1 January. It is no longer possible to use land on which another person is establishing and activating entitlements for the purpose of the nitrogen loading calculation.

The area of land used to establish entitlements will define the extent of each agricultural holding. Further to that, under the nitrates action programme, additional land may be rented to bring your nitrogen loading below the 170 kg threshold. However, for someone who is entering into that arrangement, it is important to note that the land needs to be included on their 2015 direct payment application form to establish and activate entitlements.

A new provision is that exporting slurry and manure to another farm is an alternative, but detailed records of all organic manure exported during 2015 must be maintained and a summary of all manure exports must be submitted to the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) by 31 January 2016. Exports of slurry may push the recipient farm over the 170 kg threshold, so it is important that those who are entering into such arrangements note that they need to consider whether the export to their farm will tip their balance over that threshold.

There have been lots of discussions around entitlements. What is an entitlement? It is a right to claim aid under the basic payment scheme when associated with a hectare of eligible land. It is important to note that entitlements are attached to the person or the business, not the piece of land. Establishing entitlements on an area of land does not mean that you will always be able to claim entitlements on it. In future years, the land used to claim the basic payment can be completely different to that which was originally used to create the entitlements. It could be land that is owned, leased or taken in conacre.

On land that is let under conacre arrangements, the person who is taking the land in conacre will be the one who is eligible to establish entitlements and claim payments on that land in 2015. That is a very important point to note and message to communicate.

I mentioned at the start the three questions that claimants in 2015 should ask themselves. I said that the majority would be able to answer yes, and that that would be their route towards establishing entitlements in 2015. For those for whom that is not the case, there are alternative ways to establish entitlements. Farmers not in receipt of the single farm payment in the 2013 scheme year can also establish entitlements in certain scenarios. If they never held SFP entitlements but can provide verifiable evidence of agricultural production on 15 May 2013, that is one route. In order to ascertain whether that is the case, we will be able to tap into our DARD systems that have information on livestock and some other activities in 2013. Secondly, they can apply to the regional reserve, which I will give more information on in a few moments. Thirdly, they can use what is known as a private contract clause. Private contracts allow farmers, in certain circumstances, to enter into a legal agreement to allocate the right to establish BPS entitlements to another farmer they have leased or sold land to. That is known as private contract clause 1. The alternative is to transfer the corresponding BPS entitlements where farmers have sold land to another farmer, which is known as private contract clause 2.

What will an entitlement be worth in 2015? The value of SFP entitlements held on 15 May 2014, ie those held for the 2014 scheme year, including any entitlements purchased prior to 2 May 2014, is referred to as the pot. The pot is what 2015 claimants can potentially carry forward. Various reductions will be applied to that pot, which will then be divided by the number of eligible hectares declared in 2015 to give the unit value of the new entitlements.

If the initial value of the entitlement is below the regional average, the value will increase towards the regional average. That is with a view to a transition over a seven-year period. If the initial unit value of the entitlements is above the regional average, that value will decrease towards the regional average over that seven-year period. The transition between 2015 and 2019 will take place in equal annual steps, which is consistent with achieving the flat-rate payment by 2021. In the period between 2015 and 2019, there will be a 71·4% increase or decrease towards the regional average.

The total SFP value that people are carrying forward from 2014 to 2015 will be subject to scale-back and deductions. It is important to note that one new BPS entitlement will be established for each eligible hectare activated on the 2015 form. The total BPS payment to any business will be capped at €150,000. There will be no trading of BPS entitlements in 2015 because it is the year of establishment, but BPS entitlements can be traded from 2016 onwards. They can also be leased or sold without land.

On the issue of the active farmer negative list, you will be aware that EU legislation stipulates that, from 2015, no direct payments shall be granted to those who operate airports, railway services, waterworks, real estate services and permanent sport and recreational grounds. That is known as the negative list. Those types of businesses will be prohibited from receiving payments unless they satisfy certain conditions. Businesses on the negative list should check the eligibility guidance on the DARD website.

To control those schemes in 2015, the Department will continue to carry out inspection controls to ensure compliance with the rules. Those will include on-the-spot checks, control with remote sensing and a range of administrative checks.

On the basic payment, there are a few key points to remember. New entitlements will be allocated to farmers who apply to and meet the eligibility conditions of the scheme. To be eligible to establish and claim BPS entitlements, a farmer must have the decision-making power, enjoy the benefits from the agricultural production and take all the financial risks in relation to the agricultural activity on the land for which such an allocation is requested. The situation with land eligibility is generally similar to what it was under SFP and requires close checking of LPIS maps.

Moving from the basic payment to the young farmers' payment, you will be aware that one of the key conditions of the young farmers' payment is a level 2 qualification in agriculture or a related subject. Those educational qualifications provide both an incentive and a reward for young farmers, and they will assist in the development of a well-skilled and professional industry.

The young farmers' payment is a top-up to the basic payment for those who qualify as a young farmer. The regulations define young farmers are those who are setting up for the first time an agricultural holding as the head of that holding or who have set up such a holding during the five years preceding the first submission of an application under the basic payment scheme. They must be no more than 40 years of age in the year of the first submission of their application. In other words, a farmer who turns 41 at any time during 2015 will not be eligible.

To qualify, the young farmer must be head of holding. In other words, they must exercise effective and long-term control over the business and be taking decisions related to management, benefits and financial risks. They must have established and activated payment entitlements under the basic payment scheme, and, as mentioned previously, they must have a level 2 qualification in agriculture. As you may be aware, CAFRE has been running level 2 courses through the autumn with a view to finishing in April.

The head-of-holding requirement is relatively straightforward in relation to a single-member business. As the only member of the business, that young farmer would be head of holding. In a multi-member business or 50:50 partnership, it must be clear that the young farmer can make decisions without veto by the other partners. Where partnerships do not meet that requirement, it is possible for the partners to agree to modify the partnership to either include provision for the young farmer to take decisions without veto by the other members, or, indeed, to increase the share of the young farmer above 50%.

The date when the young farmer became head of holding is also important. The young farmer will be regarded as head of holding for the purpose of the young farmers' payment from the date at which the partnership complies with the requirements. Where there are several young farmers and other persons involved in the business, it must be clear that the young farmers can control the business. The top-up payment will be for a maximum of five years, but that period will be reduced by the number of years elapsed between the young farmer setting up as head of holding and their first year of application.

Under the regional reserve, an allocation of entitlement or top-up to the value of existing entitlements can be made for young farmers. There are three categories for the regional reserve: young farmers; new entrants; and force majeure. We have provided a list of the evidence requirements for young farmers applying to the regional reserve. They are: a statement from an accountant; accounts; tax returns; partnership agreements; a letter from the bank; herd/flock/milk licence details; plant health details; birth certificate; confirmation of the level 2 qualification; photographic ID; and evidence for the applications. The young farmer evidence requirements for the regional reserve are laid out in detail in the regional reserve booklet, which is available on the DARD website. It gives further guidance on, for example, what exactly the statement from the accountant must encompass. It is important to note that the evidence must be taken to the DARD Direct office by the applicant.

The key points to remember regarding the young farmers' payment are: age, the level 2 qualification, the head of holding criteria, and the need to be eligible to establish and activate payment entitlements under the basic payment scheme.

DARD will put robust controls in place to prevent the creation of artificial conditions to gain access to this support. A penalty system will also be in place that can be used when fraudulent activity is identified.

I briefly mentioned the regional reserve earlier. The reserve will be used to allocate entitlements to the following groups: young farmers, new entrants and those not allocated entitlements as a result of force majeure or exceptional circumstances. Young farmers or new entrants must also apply to the basic payment scheme if applying to the regional reserve.

They must have a level-2 qualification to be eligible. The conditions for young farmers are the same as those for the young farmers' payment, in so far as people must be under 40 and must be setting up, or have set up in the last five years, as head of holding. New entrants must have commenced agricultural activity in 2013 or later. They must have applied to the basic payment scheme within two years of commencing agricultural activity, and they must not have had any activity in their own name or risk during the previous five years.

Evidence is also required to support applications to the regional reserve from young farmers or new entrants. It is similar to that required for the young farmers' payment, with the exception that new entrants do not have to provide evidence of age. Young farmers and new entrants can apply for an allocation of entitlements or have the value of existing entitlements increased to the regional average. It is important to note that young farmers and new entrants can apply successfully to the reserve only once.

I turn to the evidence requirements for the regional reserve without going through each in detail. For new entrants the requirements are much the same as those required for the young farmers' payment, with the exception of the age requirement, of course. Again, the evidence must be taken to the DARD Direct office by the applicant. In the following presentation, Teresa will detail the time periods.

Greening forms an integral part of CAP reform and focuses on introducing farm practices that are beneficial to the climate and to the environment. From this year, it will be mandatory for applicants to the basic payment scheme to comply with greening requirements, and if farmers do not establish any basic payment scheme entitlements they will not receive the greening payment. In Northern Ireland, the vast majority of applicants will meet the greening requirements, either because they have less that 10 hectares of arable land or because at least 75% of their eligible agricultural area is in permanent or temporary grassland. The former is defined as being land used to grow grasses or other herbaceous forage, whether self-seeded or sown, which has not been used in a crop rotation during the previous five years. There is also a requirement to designate, as environmentally sensitive permanent grassland, areas covered by the birds directive and/or the habitats directive and need protection to meet the requirements of these directives. Farmers will not be allowed to plough or convert land that has been designated as environmentally sensitive permanent grassland.

The table sets out a summary of the requirements for crop diversification under greening. The arable land information takes into account the use of a field in the past five years. Every field in Northern Ireland has received a provisional designation on the basis of that, and farmers may access that information via DARD online or at their local DARD Direct office. Most farmers with less than 10 hectares will not have a crop diversification requirement; there are no further requirements applicable to them. Farmers with between 10 hectares and 30 hectares of arable land must grow at least two different crops on that land, and the main crop must not cover more than 75%. Those with more than 30 hectares must grow at least three different crops on their arable land; the main crop must not cover more than 75%, and the two main crops together shall not cover more than 95%. We would advise those who are around those thresholds to exercise caution. I suppose, from their point of view, this will add in that added extra protection in the event of an inspection or something else in future years. If they think that they are at just less than 10 hectares, and it turns out that they are just above it, it would be advisable that they exercise caution when looking at the requirements they need to put in place in the first instance.

As far as ecological focus areas are concerned; from 1 January this year, farmers with more than 15 hectares of arable land must ensure that an area equivalent to at least 5% of their arable land is used as an ecological focus area (EFA). There are exemptions to this also: where farmers have less than, or equal to, 15 hectares of arable land and where more than 75% of the holding is in grass and the remaining arable area is less than 30 hectares.

A number of features and areas can be used by farmers to contribute to their ecological focus area. They are as follows: land lying fallow; landscape features required to be retained under cross-compliance; areas of agroforestry supported under past or current rural development programmes; areas with short rotation coppice in which there has been no use of mineral fertiliser or plant protection products beyond the second growing season post-planting, with a maximum harvest of five years; forested areas used and eligible to claim SFP in 2008; and areas with nitrogen fixing crops. The Commission has published a conversion matrix that will used by farmers in recording these areas and converting them to contribute towards their 5%.

As I mentioned earlier, it is important that farmers actively check whether they have greening requirements. One example would be dairy farmers who grow arable crops. Farmers who have taken land in conacre are also advised to check the history of the fields they are taking as they may not be aware of these requirements. Farmers can check the history of a field's land use by using the field classification identifier online or through their local DARD Direct office.

I appreciate that this is a quick run-through, but detailed guidance on greening is available on the DARD website. There have been a number of workshops and bulletins and there is a question-and-answer section on the website that provides further detail. In her presentation, Teresa will outline how farmers will report the EFA requirements to DARD. I will run through some key points.

Early planning is essential because non-compliance will result in reductions in a farmer's greening payment. Farmers are advised to check if any of the greening requirements apply to them, to identify their field classifications and to identify the greening measures they may need to comply with. As I said, all the information available on the DARD website will be an aid to farmers in doing this.

The Department will continue to deploy a comprehensive range of inspection controls to ensure compliance with the regulations. These include on-the-spot checks, control with remote sensing and a range of administrative checks.

It is also worth noting that — and Pauline mentioned it in her introductory remarks — a proposed areas of natural constraint scheme will replace the less-favoured areas compensatory allowance (LFACA) scheme. The eligibility conditions are similar to the current LFACA scheme, but there is no cattle bonus, and the scheme is still subject to European Commission approval at this time. It is proposed that only severely disadvantaged areas will be eligible for payment from 2015 and that, if agreed, it will initially last for two years. Payments must be degressive. In other words, the rate paid per hectare will fall as the area of eligible agricultural land claimed for increases.

Taking on board all that has gone before, the key points to remember are as follows: the eligibility of the land, and farmers must ensure that they only claim for eligible land; the eligibility of the person, and we outlined that there is a requirement to be an active farmer for the basic payment scheme and that additional conditions have to be met by young farmers or new entrants for the regional reserve scheme. When farmers are making applications to any of those schemes, it is important that they determine that they meet the eligibility criteria. This also comes into play in relation to the third key point, which is their eligibility to establish and hold entitlements.

I mentioned earlier that the land eligibility for 2015 is much the same as it was under the single farm payment. There are a key few points to remember about that which we are very much communicating to farmers at the various roadshows. We are advising them to read the 'Guide to Land Eligibility 2015'. As 2015 is such an important year, with the establishment and activation of entitlements in the first instance, it is important that farmers make entitlements on eligible land. So, we are encouraging them to read that guide. We are also advising them to use their LPIS maps and field information tables as a guide to claiming only on eligible land. As was the case before, farmers know their land best; so, they have are being encouraged to walk the land that they are claiming for and make deductions for ineligible features such as scrub. We have also advised farmers that the land they are claiming for must be eligible throughout the entire calendar year and that they should exercise a note of caution when claiming for marginal land. They should ask themselves whether it is eligible and whether there is agricultural activity over the entire area.

Ms Rooney: That is the end of the first presentation. We are happy to take questions on the various lines.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Thank you very much for your first presentation. I have seen some of it before.

If a farmer farms 150 hectares and rents 50 hectares, must he establish all his entitlements over the areas that he owns and rents, or can he establish the entitlements just on the area he owns?

Ms Rooney: It would be on the area he uses. If he has 150 hectares and is using 100 hectares, he will establish his entitlements on 100 hectares.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Must he establish his entitlements on all the ground he farms or can he —

Ms Rooney: It would be on all the eligible land he farms.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): He must do that?

Ms Rooney: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): OK.

I am aware that, in other regions of the UK, there are grazing licences for farmers. Why are you not supporting this in Northern Ireland? It means that farmers can draw up a contract and have a grazing licence on the land.

Dr Richard Crowe (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development): I suppose that grazing licences would be similar to conacre, which, in some respects is a grazing-type licence. As Pauline mentioned, the line we have taken is that the person who is actively farming the land is the person who is in line to claim, or activate, the entitlements. In that sort of situation, if someone had a grazing licence with a landowner, it would be the person holding the grazing licence to graze their stock who would activate the entitlements on the land. It would still not be the landowner who would activate the entitlement.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Is that the position in the rest of the UK — in Scotland, Wales and England?

Dr Crowe: I am not aware what that position is exactly, but we can certainly check that out.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I am told that it is different. I am also told that some of your departmental staff are giving guidance that that can be done in Northern Ireland.

Ms Rooney: We will come back to you on that, William. We will find out the position in the other regions.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I am told that if a contract is drawn up between the man grazing the cattle and the landowner and the landowner is charging the farmer a monthly price to graze those cattle, then that meets the criteria.

Ms Rooney: Our guidance certainly is that, if a farmer is using land, he is the person who will declare it, even if the land belongs to somebody else. The person using the land should be person declaring it.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I fully understand that, and I am not sure whether Richard wants to come in; but my point is that the farmer who owns the land draws up an agreement with the guy who owns the cattle and the farmer charges him so much a month. The farmer spreads the fertiliser and looks after the land, but charges on a monthly basis to graze cattle. I am told that that meets the criteria. Some departmental officials are telling farmers that that meets the criteria for being an active farmer.

Ms Rooney: I am not too sure whether it would meet the criteria, William. At the end of the day, the definition of "active farmer" is that you have to take the management decisions and the financial risk, and reap the benefits of it. You have to meet all three conditions. You would have to look at something like this very intensively to see where the balance of what you are describing may fall, but the likelihood is that it will fall on the person who has his animals actively using the land.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Some departmental officials are giving that guidance. There is so much ambiguity in all of this. I am told that other areas of the UK are doing this too. I think that the Department needs to get its facts right. You can understand that farmers feel that they are being left in limbo. On the one hand, they are being told that they can do something, and, on the other, they are being told that they may be liable if they do so.

Ms Rooney: We have tried to make our guidance as clear as we practically can, and those are the three conditions that apply. All three have to be met by the individual who does it. When farmers ask us questions about what the balance can be, we certainly seek them to be cautious about what they do. If they are the people who are claiming the land, then it is in their interests to make it as clear as practically possible that they are the people who are doing all these things. It is in their interests. Farmers may choose to do what they want in their business, but it is in their interests that, if we ask the question, which we may do, they are able to prove, without doubt, that they are the people who do these things.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): On the regional reserve, is there a ceiling on the area of land that new entrants are entitled to claim on?

Ms Rooney: For new entrants, there is no ceiling for the regional reserve. For the young farmer payment, there is a ceiling of 90 hectares but not for access to the regional reserve.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Does that not leave it open to abuse?

Ms Rooney: That is what the regulation says. We are very clear that this is an area in which we have to have very strict controls during this time so that only genuine applicants will come forward and will receive regional reserve entitlements.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): You can tell me whether this is right. I am told that it is possible for farmers to stack all their entitlements on a small area of ground, then give a young person all the land on which to claim and immediately go to €329 a hectare. In effect, they are big, big winners in that situation. The farmer who owns the land has his pot of money. He takes money today and puts it on a small area, and someone from the regional reserve comes in and claims a mountain of 300 hectares and gets €329 a hectare. Is that possible?

Ms Rooney: One of the things we need to look at is the separateness of businesses, because the likelihood is that this happens where a business splits. You are right to say that there can be instances where splits are absolutely genuine but, in a lot of instances, it may be for the purposes of seeking a grant. We need to have very strict controls in terms of separateness of businesses around this area in this particular claim period. We do intend to have those.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Am I right or wrong? Is this one open to abuse?

Ms Rooney: Lots of things are open to abuse.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I think that this is one that is wide open.

Ms Rooney: We want to encourage people to apply in ways that are genuine and right. We will certainly have strong controls in place to manage this. For example, there may be potential for a business to think, as you suggested, "I will concentrate my entitlement pot on a small area of land and, potentially, a young farmer in my business can create a new business." Are those businesses going to be separate? Are they really going to act as two separate businesses? That is the question.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): It would pay them to do so, would it not?

Ms Rooney: That is the question: will they be separate? It is something we will have to test thoroughly. The more applications we get like that, and have to look at thoroughly, will take us time but it is something that we have to do.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Would a ceiling not have kept you safe on that?

Ms Rooney: There is no ceiling allowed in the regulation, so that is something we do not have control over.

Mr Byrne: I welcome the presentation. Entitlements are built largely around the person rather than the land, so you could have a farmer with x number of acres and who can establish a pot of entitlements but who might want to establish them up to the maximum of only £150,000. Another person could make an application for a pot of entitlements for the rest of the land he owns.

Ms Rooney: In Northern Ireland, very few people go over that ceiling, so that circumstance would apply to very few people. If a farmer is actively using more land that will take him over that ceiling, he is the person who has to declare that land.

Mr Byrne: Yes, but for the purposes of being smart. There are a number of limiting factors, including the £150,000 ceiling. Given that the entitlements are attributed largely to the person rather than the land, then the farmer with x number of acres could lease the surplus to another farmer and a second farming business could be established. Is that right?

Ms Rooney: If he leases land that he is not using to another farmer, he should not be declaring that basic payment scheme application. What he needs to do is declare all the land he is claiming on his basic application, whether that makes him exceed a ceiling or not.

Mr Byrne: In relation to eligible dates, 15 May 2013 is a key date on the 2015 application for a farmer to establish himself as qualifying. Is that right?

Ms Rooney: The date of 15 May is the deadline for applications without penalty to the direct payments.

Mr Byrne: If a farmer wants to establish new entitlements, and he has a young farmer or new entrant; do they have to establish that they were in business on 15 May 2013 or is it 15 May 2014?

Ms Rooney: That is one of the criteria by which you can be eligible to establish entitlements in 2015. Do you want to give him the details, Sharon?

Mr Byrne: Which is the critical date?

Ms McFlynn: It depends on the applicant's route to establish entitlements. If he claimed basic payment in 2013, that would be his route. If people meet the eligibility criteria for new entrants or young farmers to the regional reserve, that would be their route. For others, if they can provide evidence that they were involved in agricultural production on 15 May 2013, that would be another category. Think of it as four routes, with those who claimed in 2013 being the route followed by the majority.

Mr Byrne: There is still confusion among farming consultants and, indeed, farmers. Perhaps the Department needs to quickly define clearly how the eligibility route can be pursued.

I want to ask about the nitrates action agreement. Is the absolute limit 170 kg? On average, what acreage would that require?

Dr Crowe: I think it depends on the type of livestock and the enterprise that is going on, but, if there is an individual or a number of businesses that need advice on that, it can be accessed through our DARD Direct offices or through CAFRE. It is dependent on the livestock and the nitrogen levels in the different manures.

Mr Byrne: Are there guidelines about the land requirement, the activity for which the land is used and the type of farming? Is there some way of the farmer being able to compute what may or may not be his or her limit?

Dr Crowe: As far as I am aware, there is information on the DARD website about the nitrates directive, and there are advisers available who can help individual farmers in that area.

Mr Byrne: So advice can be given to a farmer about that regulation.

Dr Crowe: Yes.

Mrs Dobson: I suppose that I better declare an interest: my husband is a beef and cereal farmer who receives single farm payment.

My first question is in regard to the maps. The issue works from both angles. When the Department sends out different maps with changes and alterations — we know the issues with the maps with errors — and in our new maps, two of our fields seem to have vanished, so there is so much to get sorted from your perspective. It causes great concern amongst farmers when that happens. Surely you realise that DARD has a huge job of work to do to get the mapping issue right and improve the communication with farmers on that. What could you do better to better inform farmers on the issue? Year on year, we are having the same issues, and we have had personal experience of it. How do you help them to identify the changes and work through the changes with their maps?

Ms Rooney: Over the last number of years, Jo-Anne, we have been doing a significant amount of work on maps, and we needed to.

Mrs Dobson: And it is still happening.

Ms Rooney: That is an area that the EU identified that we needed to do additional things to so that it became compliant. Over the last year, we did a considerable amount of work to the maps. The maps that were issued in November took a lot of that into account. Some things could not be taken into account, including the inspection cases where we have not been able to get those on.

As well as providing farmers with maps like that, we have been developing our online mapping service. So, as well as getting a paper map, farmers have access to an online map view, which not only lets them see the farms that are in their own holding but gives details of the other fields that are on it. So, in the past, there was a big issue associated with missing fields on maps, but the online map will allow you to get information about fields that may not appear on the paper map that has been produced.

Mrs Dobson: But the problems are still happening, Pauline. We have lost two fields.

Ms Rooney: We are just about to issue a second series of maps. Farmers came into our offices and gave us information up to 15 December, so, today, we are issuing a second set of maps from the November maps. The second set of maps will take into account a lot of the changes that farmers told us about up to 15 December as well as a lot of the inspection changes and other changes that we are aware of. There is also a third one. Richard, do you want to elaborate a bit more on that?

Dr Crowe: As Pauline said, we are issuing a smaller number of maps to folk around this time in relation to those who came into us in the local offices to identify things that they had identified on their maps. We all recognise that the way in which land is held is a complex area because of different tenures. Fields tend to change because they are taken in different ways in conacre or boundaries change slightly. When that happens, it can create a situation where they become unassociated with or unassigned to the business. That is where we find that it is difficult for us to assign a specific field to a specific business.

As Pauline indicated, we did a lot of work this year on improving positionally, so a lot of the boundaries changed a little bit. That work has all been done now, and we continue to try to move things forward. We have been trying to get inspections completed quicker so that we can get that information onto maps as well. The information that goes out in the second batch of maps will be available on the e-map system as well, which is up and running.

Mrs Dobson: Surely, Richard, a great amount of time, effort and money is tied up with your admin staff trying to sort out the issues with the maps.

Dr Crowe: In years to come, we are duty-bound to refresh one third of the area each year. In fact, we have to do a three-year cycle because Europe requires us to have maps that are based on no older than three-year-old orthophotography. That is an ongoing process. We have had to go through a very steep period in which we have made a lot of changes but, in the years to come, I would not expect that we will have as many changes as possible. We certainly have to continue to invest in that area because it is now seen as the central area for checking maps. As time goes by, I expect there to be fewer changes happening. Again, we hold land in complex ways, and whenever something changes at a farm level, we rely on individual farmers to tell us about those changes.

Mrs Dobson: We have had no changes, but two fields seem to have vanished into the ether.

I want to ask Sharon about active farming, which is an issue I am asked about time and time again. The Chair and others have touched on it. Can you confirm that it is correct that an applicant can meet the active farmer criteria in year 1 and then lease this entitlement in years 2, 3 and 4 and, while not farming, receive the benefit of the single farm payment on that land?

Ms Rooney: I will start on that one. I have heard that query over a period of time, Jo-Anne. A farmer will say that they are going to be active in 2015 but not from then on. We are going to have to be very aware of that, because it could be seen as creating artificial conditions in 2015 to establish entitlements in the first instance. There can be, and we have to accept that there can be, genuine reasons why a farmer, for example, farms in 2015 and then stops in 2016. They may become ill or there may be a family circumstance that has changed the nature of what they do. There can be genuine reasons why this would happen, but we have to be very open to the fact that that is something that we are going to have to look at in great detail. Essentially, we need to put a spotlight in that area where that happens, where people stop farming in 2016, and ensure that artificial conditions are not created in 2015 to establish entitlements.

Mrs Dobson: Surely, Pauline, this would make a mockery of the active farmer definition. I understand that entitlement is established retrospectively in the Republic so that this issue cannot arise. Would it not have been more sensible to have done that here?

Ms Rooney: I was not party to the development of policy here; we are the implementation folk. We are implementing what we have. I do not know the pros and cons of why their decisions were made as they were and ours were made as ours were, but they were. We are moving on from the position of saying that this is what we are implementing. It is something that we are very aware of, Jo-Anne. We are going to have to have good control in place to ensure that it does not happen.

Mrs Dobson: You say that you are aware of it, but how are you going to address it? What are your plans? Is there a strategy to deal with it?

Ms Rooney: We are in 2015 and we are starting to implement the schemes. That is where our focus is. We are going to have an active farmer control in place every year because that is what we are required to do. We will have to consider what we need to build into the active farmer control for 2016 and future years to ensure that what you suggest does not happen.

Mrs Dobson: We are going to have a briefing on the application processes then.

Ms Rooney: Yes.

Mrs Dobson: OK. Thank you.

Mr McMullan: Thank you for your presentation. On the negative list, you talk about recreational ground. What does that entail?

Ms Rooney: It is probably golf courses and sports pitches. There is some forestry that is eligible for the basic payment scheme and some that is not, but it is generally thought of as sporting ground.

Mr McMullan: There is a large landowner who would be affected; maybe the National Trust. What way is it fixed?

Ms Rooney: For direct payments?

Mr McMullan: Yes.

Ms Rooney: Like any direct payment applicant, it can apply to the scheme if it is actively using land. If it is not actively using land for farming activity, it cannot.

Mr McMullan: I suppose that goes back to the certain conditions. What are those certain conditions?

Ms Rooney: For the negative list?

Mr McMullan: Yes.

Ms Rooney: Sharon, do you know those particular conditions?

Ms McFlynn: They are set out in the guide to area based schemes booklet. It is important, at this stage, to say that the numbers are very small. There was an exercise done earlier in the year where people who were potentially on the negative list, and had taken into account the rules that were there, were written to. The number was in the twenties. After that, there was a policy decision made about the number of hectares involved that brought that number down even further, so we are into very low numbers at this stage. As I said, the rules around that are set out in the booklet. There are probably a few too many to go through now, but the information is out there.

Mr McMullan: If you had somebody on that negative list who had never farmed before and, all of a sudden, started farming — to go back to Jo-Anne's question — would you look upon them in the same way?

Ms Rooney: If people own land, they have a right to make decisions as to how they use that land. If they choose to actively farm that land in 2015, they can establish entitlement on it, so they have the right to do that, yes.

Mr McMullan: OK. There is a lot of concern amongst the young farmers; a lot of them do not qualify under exceptional circumstances etc. Are there exceptional circumstances where somebody who does not qualify as a young farmers can claim?

Ms Rooney: Force majeure, essentially, on the young farmers' scheme.

Mr McMullan: Yes.

Ms Rooney: I would imagine that there is, if there are particular circumstances that prevent them — that is what force majeure is — from making their application in that period, but it is hard to imagine what those circumstances may be. They may be violently ill on the day they had to finish their final assignment or something — people doing these qualifications do assignments as they go along. It might apply if something like that happened, so that they could not finish it until two weeks later and that pushed them back. It would be a real exceptional circumstance.

Mr McMullan: I thought there might have been a list of circumstances, but there is not. I am just thinking of the young farmer who is pulled into farming because of a death in the family.

Ms Rooney: The force majeure happens if a very dramatic event happens. There might be a farm and the father dies and things like that. They would need to be on the path. The only thing that would take them out would probably be the qualification for this year. It would have to be something that would prevent them taking those final steps, because that is the stage they are at. There could be a death in the family or it could be that they were suddenly struck or had a car accident. It is some kind of an event like that. You will never get examples of force majeure that can be written down because they are entirely unexpected. You cannot —

Mr McMullan: But it is in there.

Ms Rooney: Yes, a force majeure would be there.

Mr McMullan: The other thing is the nomination of authorised persons to fill the forms in. I noticed in your figures that there were more authorised persons seeking claims than there were farming, but the farmers are saying that, if there is a problem with the forms, the Department writes back to the farmer, not the authorised person. Is that changing now? Can we go directly back to the authorised person and not the farmer?

Ms Teresa O'Neill (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development): That has been identified as an issue and, in previous scheme years, we dealt with the farm business as opposed to the authorised person. At the minute, we are concentrating on the process of getting the application in, and we have agreed a process of who will get the summary of the application. It will be the authorised person. Communication will also go to the farm business to let them know that that person has submitted an application on their behalf. We have to do the same process as we go through the administration process for the scheme year. We have to consider in what circumstances we will communicate with the authorised person and in what circumstances we will communicate with the farm business, or with both. That is ongoing as we think about the further processes.

Ms Rooney: That should address the issue.

Mr McMullan: That should address that now. That was a problem before.

Is the transition period 71·4%?

Ms Rooney: Yes. In theory, it would take seven years to get to the regional average of €329, and within this CAP reform cycle, there only are five years. It would be five sevenths, which I think is that figure. That is how you get to that.

Mr McMullan: That is grand. Thank you.

Mr Buchanan: I want to go back to the Chair's point at the beginning. If you have someone coming in under national reserve and claiming for, for instance, 250 hectares of mountain, how are you going to define whether that is a genuine case or simply something to take advantage of the system?

Ms Rooney: There are conditions. For someone to go into the regional reserve, to be applicable, the two main sources are young farmer or new entrant. It is a succession, so the norm is that a young farmer becoming the head of holding will be a young farmer in an existing business. Cases where that is not what is presented will certainly trigger something with us, and we will have to look very carefully to see why that is not the case. There can be genuine reasons why that is not the case, but that is certainly what would trigger something for us to look at those particular instances, if and when they occur. It should not be the norm that that would happen, because succession is the norm within the farming business.

Mr Buchanan: Given that there is no cap on it, are you satisfied that you have a strong enough system in place to overcome this type of activity?

Ms Rooney: We will apply what we call a separateness control. I will let Richard explain exactly what elements are in that separateness control.

Dr Crowe: We would apply a number of criteria to the issuing of any new farm business, one of which, as Pauline mentioned, is the separateness. I would suggest to the Committee that it is one of the core controls that we will apply around the questions that you are asking. It looks very much at the separateness of the facilities of the business. It normally involves a farm visit. It would be the facilities, the land and the housing. In this circumstance, we will be considering, for example, whether a business is established or looking to be established and whether it is being established with the same livestock that was in a previous business. We can look at all the records of that. If it is on the same land as a previous business, what has changed that means a new business needs to be established on that land?

Certainly, through this discussion, I am keen to send out a very strong message around the separateness of the businesses that are being proposed to be established that we will look very carefully at those and get into a level of detail. As I mentioned, the other aspects that we look at are more technical on the ground, but we will look at administrative arrangements as well. So, a simple piece of paper as a lease, for example, would not be sufficient for us to determine that that was a separate business. If it has been land that has been in an existing business, for example, we will particularly look at whether the land tenure of that has changed in some way. We might identify whether that land has been sold to the new individual in the new business. We will also look for accounting details. As part of our standard process for a new business application, the applicant must supply a unique tax reference number for agriculture. Again, we will look at that aspect and look at the business structure that is being set up.

The strong message that we send out today on separateness is that the new entrant and the regional reserve are for genuine businesses that are coming on to the farming scene, and, where they have links, possibly very strong links, to existing business, we will check those thoroughly.

Mr Buchanan: Thank you. One of the other problems that we are getting in west Tyrone is around potato growers. The majority of the potato growers took their land in conacre, and that is not available for them now. It has the potential to put potato farmers out of business. What mitigating circumstances are in place to stop that happening?

Ms Rooney: We heard that that is a problem, Tom, and I know that the Minister put out a number of suggestions that people could think of using. The difficulty is that, if a potato farmer is using that land in 2015, that farmer is the person who will be establishing entitlements on it. It will largely come down to an agreement with the person they are taking the land off to see whether they can come to a mutual arrangement. We held a number of meetings around the country, and that issue was raised at a number of them. You find that it is a problem in some areas and not in other areas. In some areas where there are potato growers, they seem to be able to get land, and in other areas, they do not. A lot of that might be down to the value that you are getting from renting land. We have a calculator on our website, so if farmers are thinking about leasing out some land over a period, they could see whether that would get them more back than establishing entitlements on it would. There are circumstances around the value of rent where that can happen. People might want to think about that. The potato growers could approach the people they normally take land from to see whether they could come to an agreement.

Mr McAleer: Your presentation referred to the criteria of decision-making powers and the risks and the benefits around the young farmers' scheme. What exactly would a potential applicant need to do to prove to the Department that they have a decision-making role in the business?

Ms Rooney: They have to be able to make decisions without veto. So, if they decide to do something, such as sell some of the cattle, they need to be able to make that decision without someone else in the business telling them that they cannot do that.

Mr McAleer: How do they prove that to you?

Ms Rooney: They just have to prove that they can make a decision at that level. If they are in a business where they hold 51% of an interest, their accounts will show that, because they are getting the majority of the value from that business; therefore, they can do that. If it is a 50:50 partnership, that will not show up just by looking at the books, so it would need to be written into a partnership agreement. That would be of use to people in the business, because it sets out the roles and responsibilities of each member of the business. That could be something that we should maybe seek to encourage people to have.

Mr McAleer: I know from previous updates that the Committee has received that there has been a large interest in the young farmers' scheme. I am aware that around 2% has been set aside for that.

Ms Rooney: There is a 2% ceiling to that.

Mr McAleer: Do you have any sense of the prospective number of applicants? What will happen? People are expecting a 25% top-up. What will happen if the pot does not spread enough?

Ms Rooney: The value of the top-up payment will reduce.

Mr McAleer: As a percentage.

Ms Rooney: Yes. There are round about 2,500 on the CAFRE courses at the minute. I am aware that other courses are being run by other providers in the region, and people who already have a level 2 qualification, at least, in agriculture may well come forward for this. So, it is hard to put a figure on what it will be. People who are doing the course are probably a mixture of young farmers and new entrants; not all of them are young farmers. We are thinking that there will potentially be 2,500 or 3,000, but that figure could be wildly out. That is one of the things about this year: there are lots of unknowns. We will try to put a figure on something and think that that is what it is probably going to be, but it could be much less or it could be much more. We are going to have to work with whatever comes up in the application period. We think that it will be around 3,000, but it could be more or less.

Mr McAleer: On the back of what Thomas said about potato growers, I have met quite a number of farmers of cattle who are having great difficulty in getting conacre this year. They are facing a very difficult time; they will basically need to sell off their cattle because they do not have enough land to graze them. That is probably one of the negative consequences of the CAP reform.

Mr Anderson: Thank you for your presentation. I will also go back to the issue raised by the Chairman and Mr Buchanan about the system being open to abuse for multiple claims. Is it good enough to say that a strong message will be sent out, that they are pinning down new entrants and that genuine businesses are applying? Do you not think that it is still open to abuse as it sits? I am not sure about the checks and balances that you are putting in and about how you are going to police all of it. There seems to be a wait-and-see attitude. I am trying to pin this down. How confident are you about the checks? I note from your presentation that there will be on-the-spot checks, control with remote sensing, a range of administration checks and things like that, but will that be enough? I know that, if someone wants to do something, they will go to the ends of the earth to do it. Will those measures stop it?

Dr Crowe: I think that there are elements of all of these schemes that are open to fraud. We have to guard against that in the best way possible, but we also have to enable the conditions for genuine people who are new entrants or young farmers to enter the scheme without undue bureaucracy. We have to enable the process to work. You mentioned the strong message. It will be backed by checks and, where we see new business applications, for example, coming in during this period and from now on, we will look at them very carefully in all their aspects, as I outlined. Again, I come back to one of the points that Pauline made: the more applicants we receive that we have to check, the longer it will take us to do that. That is a potential difficulty that we will have, but we will check those. It is a matter of looking at the evidence that is presented to us and scrutinising it in a detailed way. Certainly from our perspective, we are duty-bound to ensure that the schemes are not fraudulently accessed, but we have to ensure that there is access for genuine folk who are coming forward into the schemes.

Mr Anderson: Will all claims be checked at some stage, or is there a possibility that a number of claims will never be checked?

Dr Crowe: At this point, all applications, for example for new businesses, will be checked very thoroughly, particularly where they appear to relate closely to an existing business. Again, I come back to the idea of a separateness test. That will not necessarily be a one-off test. It would be something that we will bear closely in mind when we carry out on-the-spot checks on the normal sample of businesses each year.

Mr Anderson: Do you see this as being a drawn-out process of checking that will take a lot of time?

Dr Crowe: We hope not, but it is likely —

Mr Anderson: Do you have the resources to do it as quickly as possible?

Dr Crowe: I am saying that if we get a deluge of applicants at this time, it will be challenging to move through them in a timely way. Again, we would be duty-bound to carry out those checks. As we have said, in other situations, in relation to cases such as demonstration of being an active farmer for example, we will take a precautionary approach, which will be to hold any payments until such proof has been provided that the applicants meet the scheme requirements.

Mr Anderson: So, Richard, you are fairly confident that, with what is in place, you will not be coming back at some stage where we will be talking about fraudulent claims?

Dr Crowe: We will be putting in checks and balances to avoid that, as we must do. I sincerely hope that we will not come back to you with high levels of fraudulent claims. Others will be challenging us about that as well.

Mr Milne: Thanks for your presentation. It was very interesting, and I know that a lot of the stuff has been scrutinised by this point. I want to go back to one little point, and I am talking about eligibility throughout the year. Take a farmer living in south Derry, for example, where sheep farmers take land at the latter end of a year or at the start of a year. The farmer has had the main activities on the farm in the spring and summer and has taken the crops off the land and then leases the land to the hill farmer for two or three months. Is it OK to do that?

Ms Rooney: Are you talking about winter grazing?

Mr Milne: Yes.

Ms Rooney: I know that that is normal practice in a lot of cases. In order to be an active farmer, the farmer has to show that he takes the management decisions and risks and has the benefits. That can be a normal practice. If the farmer claiming the land is able to demonstrate that he has taken the majority of the agricultural activity and benefit out of that land — and people can look at all sorts of things scientifically to prove that the grass grows so quickly and that by the time a farmer hands it over to another farmer there is not much value left in it — then he is the person who should be claiming the basic payment on that land.

In those circumstances, that is what he may have to do. It is always going to be easier and safer for a farmer to say, "I will be the person who does everything on this land". That is going to be the nice, easy, clean solution for him. If he chooses to do something different, he is going to have to be able to demonstrate to us that he has had the majority of benefit out of it.

Mr Milne: That is fair enough. The other thing I was going to say is that there is always going to be a period of bedding down for this whole scheme. There has to be a certain amount of understanding that people will make mistakes. With the discussions that we hear day and daily, and when even experts such as yourselves find it difficult to explain something or tell the rights and wrongs of something, there has to be an understanding, in the next six months or year, that farmers will come across difficulties or that the Department will find out about something. Surely, there has to be an understanding that a farmer has genuinely made a mistake. I know that you cannot legislate for that here.

Ms Rooney: We will be bound by what the regulations say, to a large degree. With "errors" there is a definition. Do you know it, Sharon?

Ms McFlynn: I do not know the definition offhand in terms of unintentional mistakes, but, as Pauline said, there are rules laid down in the legislation around that.

You can have all your supporting evidence in for the young farmers' payment, but, as has already been alluded to, if there are exceptional circumstances, that is one issue. Similarly, in relation to greening, Teresa will cover in her presentation how the applicant has to complete and declare all that information in relation to an ecological focus area. We appreciate that it is complex, but, as I said, the rules in terms of the unintentional are there and will have to be adhered to.

There will also be cases where

I think that that has happened year on year with the single farm payment, where there has been a clerical error by the applicant; you can see that one number has been put in somewhere and another has been put in somewhere else. It may be a transcription error. There has been some element of flexibility in and around that.

Ms Rooney: However, it is limited. We are bound by those rules.

Mr Elliott: Apologies for missing the presentation; I had to go to another meeting. I am sure that it was very good. I will confine my question to one issue: the active farmer criteria. Everything seems to hinge on the three issues of decision-making powers, the benefits and the financial risks. If I were a landowner setting the land, surely I have the decision-making powers; I can say, "Well, that land can only be used for silage cutting, grain planting, potato planting or grazing". I can put that restriction on it.

Secondly, benefits and financial risks could go broadly together because you could build in a benefit as to the person whom you are leasing or renting the land to. You could say, "I want to see your books at the end of the year because I'll get a share of your profits or a negative impact of any losses you make". In fact, as the landowner, you could be the decision-making person; you could be taking the benefits and the financial risks as well. Where would that sit?

Ms Rooney: We see the person carrying out the activity as the person who was doing that. The weight of that decision-making would lie with the person who was carrying out the activity.

Mr Elliott: So, you do not see any way that the landowner could qualify under those three criteria in the example that I have just explained?

Ms Rooney: I think that our guidance says that there may be exceptional circumstances in which a landowner can demonstrate that, but nobody has really presented those yet. There is the opportunity for someone to do that. We interpret that as the weight of the decision-making and risk being with the person who was using the land.

Mr Elliott: Is the only guidance that you have issued a question-and-answer paper? Is there any other guidance?

Ms Rooney: In the guide to area-based schemes, which is available on the website, there are a number of worked examples. I do not know whether you have had the opportunity to —

Mr Elliott: There are a few; I am looking at them at the moment. There is a document with three or four pages in it.

Ms Rooney: No, this is an 84-page guide.

Mr Elliott: Just what the farmer does not want to have.

Ms Rooney: There are some worked examples in it. They are just illustrations; you can get myriad scenarios, so they are just illustrative to try to —

Mr Elliott: But that is literally the guidance that you are going by.

Ms Rooney: Yes.

Mr Elliott: The appeal mechanism for any farmer who disputes your finding against them is still the same through the —

Ms Rooney: The review of decisions. We have a review-of-decisions process that will apply to the direct payment schemes.

Mr Elliott: A new system?

Ms Rooney: We will adjust it. Obviously, it has been established to deal with the single farm payment and the less favoured area compensatory allowance (LFACA).

Mr Elliott: It will be no different; the Department can overrule it.

Ms Rooney: It will be largely the same.

Mr Elliott: The Department has the final say.

Ms Rooney: You could always go to an ombudsman beyond the decision of the Department.

Mr Elliott: Yes, but the ombudsman looks at only the mechanisms used by the officials; they cannot really overturn the decision as such. The only chance is judicial review, which is not appropriate for most people in that position. OK, thank you.

Mrs Dobson: Touching on a very important point that Oliver raised earlier, concerns have been raised with me about what people are calling an "old young farmer". There are young farmers who are not eligible for the uplift funding because they have been head of holding for more than five years. I am thinking, for example, of a young farmer — a young man or woman — who becomes head of holding following the death of a parent, as Oliver said earlier. They could be as young as 23 when they become head of holding. Are you sure that they are not being penalised by the system, given the five-year rule that you have created?

Ms Rooney: That five years is set in European regulation, so we have not actually set that. I know that the Minister has raised this issue with the European Commissioner.

Mrs Dobson: It has been raised with me. A person could, in fact, become head of holding when they are 18 years old, and, therefore, when they are 23 years old, they are not eligible. Why call it a young farmers' scheme when certain young farmers, as I have outlined, are not eligible because of family circumstances? Why not call it a new farmers' scheme or a new entrants' scheme?

Ms Rooney: The name from Europe is "young farmers' payment". That five years is written in regulations.

Mrs Dobson: Are you concerned? Is there an equality issue with the scheme? Will you seek legal advice on it?

Ms Rooney: I am not aware that there is an equality issue with the scheme. I think that the scheme is set out to incentivise people to come in and take over farms.

Mrs Dobson: Yes, but in the scenario that I have outlined —

Ms Rooney: In the scenario that you have outlined, that person has already been head of holding for over five years.

Mrs Dobson: They are not eligible for the young farmers' payment.

Ms Rooney: They are already head of holding, so there is no need to incentivise them to become head of holding.

Mrs Dobson: Are they not being penalised then because they are not eligible? If someone takes over the farm at 18 years of age, at 23 years old they are not eligible because their five years essentially rules them out, yet someone else who is entering the scheme at 40 is eligible. Is there not an irregularity here?

Ms Rooney: The payment is to incentivise people to become the head of holding.

Mrs Dobson: Surely, it is not to penalise someone who is already head of holding as a young farmer.

Ms Rooney: If you are already head of holding, and have been for a number of years, the regulations would exclude you from getting that payment. That is just what we are sitting with.

Mrs Dobson: Do you feel that that is fair?

Ms Rooney: That is what we are implementing. That is what Europe —

Mrs Dobson: Do you feel that it is fair?

Ms Rooney: My opinion on it really is not what is at issue here; it is the implementation of scheme.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I have had some concerns around that, too, for some time. I have mentioned in the past the fact that many farmers who are still relatively young cannot avail themselves of it. There is a danger that they may have to be excluded from other things in the future, such as grant top-ups. They are still under 40 years of age. I would have concerns around equality. That is an issue.

With regard to the transfer of entitlements; they cannot be sold this year, but if they are sold with land or a long-term lease, they can be transferred. Is that the case or not?

Ms Rooney: Entitlements are being established only this year.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): OK. But we will have land sold this year.

Ms Rooney: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Land sold before 15 May; land that is being sold at the moment. Will there be a pot of money, then?

Ms Rooney: Yes. The person who is using it on 15 May will establish entitlements on it.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Yes, but would the farmer who has the pot of money today and has sold his land need to transfer the pot of money? We are told that the money does not belong to the land; it belongs to the farmer. Is that right?

Ms Rooney: Yes. That is right.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): What happens? Can that man transfer his pot of money? No?

Ms Rooney: There are those private-contract clauses. Which one would it be?

Ms McFlynn: PCC2. It allows transfer with the sale of land.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Not with a long-term lease, just sale?

Ms McFlynn: The sale of land.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I would have thought that there would have to be something in place to do that.

We will move on to your next presentation. Can I say that we have around one hour left? If it is possible, could everyone tighten up?

Ms Rooney: I think the presentations are shorter.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Otherwise, you will have to stay here until 3.30 pm and come back. Maybe we could tighten things up a wee bit and get through it in an hour.

Ms Rooney: Teresa will present on this.

Ms T O'Neill: I will take you through the application process for making a claim for payment in the 2015 scheme year. As Pauline said at the start, for the majority of farmers, it will not have changed. Basically, the application process continues as in previous years. It is just that the schemes are called something different. The importance of claiming early and quickly still prevails. A small number of farmers will have a number of steps to take on top of their normal application process. I will talk you through those scenarios as well.

The first thing is the key dates in the application period. The period will open on 18 March with the launch of the online application service. Hardy copy application packs will issue by the end of March. Farmers will receive those in the post around 27 March. As it has been in recent years, 15 May is the final date for receipt of applications without penalty. That is still the key date for the small number of farmers who have to submit other applications or supporting evidence. As in previous years, 9 June is the close of the application period.

The schemes that can be claimed for on the single application are the basic payment scheme and greening payment and the young farmers' payment, which replace the single farm payment that was there in previous years. You can also claim for the areas of natural constraints scheme. Although that scheme is subject to EU approval, you still apply for it in the application, and, subject to it being approved, we can process payment. The Northern Ireland countryside management scheme and the Northern Ireland organic farming scheme have been carried forward from previous years and will continue to be on the application form. The farm woodland premium scheme and the farm woodland scheme, two forestry schemes, have also been carried forward. It is only for applicants who are already in agreement to apply, but this is the first year that they will apply on the single application. That is just to prevent the farmer having to make multiple applications; they can now do it on the one form. As in previous years, there will also be a number of agricultural waste exemptions.

The application itself, regardless of whether it is online or on paper, centres around four sections. The first one is the farm business details, which is just the name of the farm business, the farm business address and the contact details. There is a facility to amend the contact details for the farm business. There are a number of yes/no questions that are specific to the schemes to which the farmer wants to apply. The number of questions that they have to answer will depend on what is applicable to that particular business.

Most important is the section on land details. Sharon has already explained that the importance is in checking what data is pre-printed on the form, that the claim is accurate, that usage and the area on the form are what you want to claim, and that you are declaring all eligible land. That is the most important part, and it is where mistakes are usually made. It is very important that farmers check that field by field and make sure that the data that is pre-printed is accurate and, if it is not, that they change it to make sure that they claim accurately and declare all the land. The final section is the declarations and undertakings, which is just where the farmer is committing to making an accurate claim.

How do you apply? There are three options. They can submit the form electronically online. The second option is to complete it on paper and return it by post. There are pre-addressed envelopes in the application packs for farmers who choose to do that. They can hand-deliver their paper form to their local DARD Direct office. We touched on the fact that the application can be completed by someone on behalf of the farm business. If a farmer is asking someone outside the farm business to submit the form on their behalf, they will need to make sure that they have completed a nomination of authorised person form. If they have already done that in previous years, we still hold it, and that is fine. However, if someone is nominating someone else to complete the form on their behalf for the first time this year, they need to make sure that the nomination of authorised person form is completed.

Our preferred option of the three is online application. The next couple of slides explain the benefits of online application, which is our preferred channel. We want to promote that and increase uptake of it this year. Our target is for 50% of applications to be received online in 2015. We have seen a number of increases over the last number of years. In 2014, we achieved slightly under 40%; 11,751 applications were received online. A lot of those forms were submitted directly by the farmer themselves, and some of them were submitted by someone acting on behalf of the farmer. Of the total number of applications last year, 4,017 forms were submitted directly by the farmer and 7,734 were submitted by someone working on behalf of the farmer. We want to increase that, and, as I said, our target for online applications this year is 50%.

We feel that online application has a number of benefits. We have developed a new online facility this year. As with any modern technology, there are the standard benefits: it is faster, there are fewer clicks and it is more secure. However, specific to this application for farmers, there are things that the online form does that the paper form does not. It tailors the questions to the business. Therefore, if you apply online, you have to answer only the questions that are applicable. If you have a paper form, you have to answer a ream of questions, and that is where mistakes can happen. There are also on-screen warnings if you miss a question. The system is built to check that you have not gone past a question without answering it. That will reduce a lot of follow-up work between us and the farm business after the application has been submitted.

For farmers who have to submit evidence, when they apply online, it will highlight that further evidence is required. There will be a reminder as part of the application. Hopefully, that will help farmers make sure that their evidence is in by 15 May. Another new thing this year is that the online application will give a summary of your land details at the very start. Then, as you change your land details through your application, those will continue to be updated automatically. This was requested when we worked with farmer representatives. Farmers identified that it would be useful, and we have implemented it as part of the online application service this year.

There is also an inbuilt greening calculator. You will probably have heard that there is already a greening calculator in our online service that farmers can use in forward planning for their business. It will now also be in their application. As they enter their land details, the fee classification will be adjusted, and the system will display what crop diversification requirements they have and whether they have ecological focus area (EFA) requirements. That will be built into their application. There are automatic checks on the claim area against the maximum eligible area (MEA). Again, putting in the wrong figure is a simple mistake that farmers make unintentionally. There will be checks built in to make sure that the area that they claim is equal to or less than the maximum eligible area. If they want to claim more, it prompts them that they need to submit a correction form and increase their MEA.

We expect that a lot of farm businesses will add a field to their claim this year. If you do it online, once you enter the field number, it will pre-populate the land details that we hold on our systems and give the farmer the maximum eligible area. Again, that will allow them to make an accurate claim. If they add a field on paper, they will have to source the MEA from whoever received the map for that field, go to their DARD Direct office or look on the online viewer. If a farmer is claiming for the first time or adding fields, there is a greater incentive to use the online system because, as they enter the field number, the land information is pre-populated and they then just have to make the accurate claim.

There are validation checks and associated warning messages throughout the system, again with a view to helping the farmer to make an accurate claim. We talked about the online map viewer. Well, another new thing this year is that you will be able to view your online map, whether at field level or at holding level, within the application. You do not have to come out of one system and go into another application; it is all within one application.

You can update you farm business details online. At the end of the application there is a link to your farm business contact details — name and address and so forth — and you can make changes. There will be an instant receipt and summary of the claim, which will be emailed to the person who is filling out the application on behalf of the farm business. Again, that information that an application has been received will go to the farmer.

All of that leads to a reduced risk of penalties and helps us to pay farmers earlier. So, there is a collective outcome of more farmers applying online and more accurate claims, which benefits us because we can process the applications more quickly.

As I said, for the majority of farmers, that will be the process, and they will do what they have done in previous years, namely submit their applications online or on paper. However, for a small number of farmers, there will be the need for additional steps. That will happen in scenarios where there is a farm business with positive greening requirements, a farm business claiming young farmers' payment, a farm business applying to reach a reserve under the new entrants' rules, and a farm business that was farming in 2013 but did not hold entitlements and is claiming for the first time. Farm businesses on the negative list will also be affected.

We mentioned a lot of those scenarios in the previous session, but I will take you through the additional steps that those particular farm businesses will have to take. The first thing that a farm business with positive greening requirements will do is complete their single application online. The system will display the areas of ecological focus and advise them on which of those areas they have to declare to meet the greening requirements. At the end of the online application, there will be a link to the SAF4, which is the form that the farmer needs to complete to declare their ecological focus areas. That takes the form of a spreadsheet and will have built-in conversion weighting matrices. It is easier for the farmer to complete that spreadsheet, and they will then mail it to the Department. In addition, they have to mark the location of the EFA on the farm map and submit that to their local DARD Direct office.

Although that affects a small number of farmers, we are aware that this is a new process and that it will be complex for farmers to understand what they have to do. However, there will be help available, which we will talk about in a minute. So, those with positive greening requirements will complete the application online, complete their SAF4 and indicate on their farm map where the EFA is. Those are the additional steps that they have to take.

Farm businesses that are claiming the young farmers' payment will complete the single application form and a young farmer registration or regional reserve application. That is one application form, and there will be a couple of options on the form and you need to decide whether to apply for young farmer payment or a regional reserve. If they are a completely new business, they need to make sure that they have completed an FB1. A lot of farm businesses will already have completed one, which is a request to the Department for business ID. They need to deliver their supporting evidence, along with their applications, to their local DARD Direct office.

I stress again that that all needs to be done by 15 May, and, because there is a lot of evidence in this scenario that farmers might need to gather — for instance, a birth certificate or a letter from an accountant — our advice is to start collecting the evidence now. A lot of farm businesses do not apply until the last two weeks of the application period. Anybody who falls into the scenarios that I am outlining is advised to start collecting evidence now to give themselves plenty of time.

New farm businesses applying to the regional reserve as a new entrant should follow a process similar to that for the young farmers' payment. They should complete their single application, complete their regional reserve application with supporting evidence, make sure that they have submitted an FB1 form and deliver their evidence to the DARD Direct office along with their application. The message is the same: this has to be in by 15 May, so start collating the evidence now.

There are two other scenarios where further evidence is required. It is just the one application, which is the single application, but, along with that, they need to submit evidence. There is no other form to complete. That is where farm businesses were engaged in production activity on 15 May 2013. There is a question on the application and, if they answer yes to that, they need to submit the evidence to show that they were actively farming in May 2013. We mentioned the negative list and those farm businesses operating an airport or railway service or waterworks. There is a question on the application and, if they say yes to it, they are affirming that they are on the negative list, and they will be prompted to provide evidence along with their application by 15 May.

As I said, we know that the schemes are new to farmers, and, to help farmers make accurate applications, a guide to area-based schemes is included in our single application pack. There is a series of frequently asked questions, and further detailed guidance is available on the DARD website. There is a dedicated telephone helpline. If farm businesses have any queries, they can contact us by phone. As well as that, we have two dedicated email addresses where we can take queries electronically — one is for greening and one is a helpline for general queries — or they can call the DARD Direct office, where they can receive advice face-to-face.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Thank you for your presentation. I will bring in the Deputy Chair, Joe Byrne.

Mr Byrne: Thanks for the presentation. What difference, if any, will there be between the new proposed countryside management scheme and the one that we have had? Is it the same?

Ms Rooney: Sorry, Joe, the door was closing and I missed the end of your question.

Mr Byrne: You mentioned all the different areas, and I am asking about the countryside management scheme. Will it operate on the same basis as previously, or will there be any changes to it?

Ms Rooney: The existing countryside management schemes will continue for the length of the contracts or the agreements that are in place. We are in the process of developing a proposed new scheme — an environmental farming scheme — but it is not available for application on this single application form.

Mr Byrne: How long will the existing scheme continue for?

Ms Rooney: It will continue for the length of the agreements that are in place. Some of them run —

Mr Byrne: Some of them might have two or three years to run, is that right?

Ms Rooney: Yes.

Mr Byrne: OK. Can I ask you, then, about the ANCs? You said that they are subject to agreement with Europe. Where are we with that, and what implications will that have for some of the applications for 2015?

Ms Rooney: Like all other pillar 2 schemes, we are still waiting for Commission approval for those schemes, but it was important and necessary for application to be made to an ANC by 15 May. That is why we put it on the form as a proposed scheme. People can apply for ANC as they would have applied in the past for LFACA, but it is identified clearly as a proposed scheme. If there are difficulties or if the Commission then says, "No, that scheme is not approved," those will not progress further to payment, but if approval comes through for the scheme, they will.

Mr Byrne: When are you expecting approval or otherwise?

Ms Rooney: At this stage, they are thinking that they will get approval around June. That is the time frame at the minute.

Mr McMullan: I have two very quick questions. It seems that the importance of online application cannot be got out enough. Indeed, of the two of them, the online is much safer, and it does a lot of the work for the farmer. That needs to get out to improve the 38% rate. I will go back to the nomination form. Can you get that online, or does that have to be a separate form?

Ms Rooney: The form for nomination of an authorised person?

Mr McMullan: Yes.

Ms T O'Neill: The form is available. It is in your pack in paper, but it is also available online.

Mr McMullan: So you can nominate online.

Ms T O'Neill: You still have to download the form and submit it. There is an exercise in DARD to develop our online service. At the minute, it is the maps and there is the application, but there are a number of other bits of correspondence that we want to eventually make as online as possible. That work is ongoing.

Ms Rooney: We have taken a little bit of the digital-ness and put it in, but we have not quite got there on all of that yet.

Ms T O'Neill: It is work in progress.

Mr McMullan: The important thing out of today is to get that message out about online application. The nomination form has to be downloaded, filled in and sent off separately.

Ms T O'Neill: If they are actually nominating someone and they are going to do it online — there is actually an online way of doing it, because the farm business has to nominate someone to act on its behalf, but the person who does it registers online. There is a process through which they can register online and add clients to their list, so there is an online process for nominating an authorised person.

Mr McMullan: You would know the authorised persons if they were registered with you.

Ms T O'Neill: Yes.

Mr McMullan: So are we calling for them to get registered with you as well?

Ms T O'Neill: Yes. If there are agents, for instance, who do a lot of forms on behalf of farm businesses, they should register now for the online service as an agent. There is a process to do that, which is detailed on our online services webpage.

Mr McMullan: Do you have a list of those agents?

Ms T O'Neill: Yes.

Mr McMullan: Are you contacting them?

Ms Rooney: We certainly talk to agent bodies. For example, we have regular meetings with the Northern Ireland Agricultural Consultants Association (NIACA), which has been here to talk in the past, and with the Northern Ireland Agricultural Producers' Association (NIAPA).

Ms T O'Neill: If a lot of the agents are already registered anyway, they do not have anything else to do, but if you are a new agent or if you are taking on a new client, you would have to take action. However, a lot of the agents that we know of are already registered, and they do not have to do the nomination of authorised person form.

Mr Buchanan: If someone fills in a form, online or in whatever format, and then, a day or two later, realises that they have made a mistake, is there time to rectify that if it has already been sent on to the office?

Ms Rooney: I think you can alter the online form this year. That is one of the developments that we have made. Until now, if you had done an online form and then had a change, you would have to do it on paper, but this year I think you can make those adjustments. Is there a certain time frame?

Ms T O'Neill: It is still within the time frame of 15 May and 9 June. Those time frames have not changed.

Mr Elliott: Thanks again. Obviously, the online service is a good addition, and there seems to be quite a lot of extras in it this year as well, which may help, as long as it is not overly confusing, but it does not sound like it is. One way that you could get more people to use the online service is to give them an extra 5% on the SFP. That would certainly encourage them to go online. Sorry, I should declare an interest, because I use the online service. There are still quite a number of rural areas that do not have a good broadband or Internet system. Are there any facilities within the DARD Direct offices so that they can go in and do their SFP or their application online?

Ms Rooney: I think we do have a terminal in each DARD Direct office that people can use.

Mr Elliott: All right; just checking. The second issue is around the greening and the permanent grassland. I notice that it says that you cannot decrease by 5% from your 2012 level.

Ms Rooney: That is being dealt with at a regional level in Northern Ireland, and has been for quite a period of time.

Mr Elliott: But what impact does that have on the individual farmer?

Ms Rooney: Because we look at it at a regional level, it should not really have any major impact, unless all the farmers out there suddenly ploughed up their grassland.

Mr Elliott: But they still have to complete that on their SFP form.

Ms Rooney: We do a return on an annual basis on the amount of grass that is here, and I do not think we have ever got a reduction of more than 5% in the time that we have been measuring it. If that did happen — it is considered unlikely — we would probably need to consider things like where that big change came from and potentially look to get the grassland re-established, but that really is considered to be very unlikely.

Mr Elliott: OK; so there is very little impact at all.

Ms Rooney: No. That is why we measure it at regional level, so that takes that administrative burden —

Mr Elliott: But it still has to be completed by the individual farmer on their form.

Ms Rooney: They will fill in what they are growing in each of their fields, which they always do anyway. We have a more detailed list this year because there are crop codes, but the large majority of farmers will use FR1, which is grass. For the vast majority of farmers, that will not change a lot.

Mr Elliott: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I notice that over 7,000 applications were received in 2014. Do you expect any forward —

Ms Rooney: We got 38%. We had hoped to get 40%, but we were very, very close to it. This year, we are aiming for 50%. We have done a lot of work on our online form this year. As Teresa said, we worked with the farmer stakeholders to see what issues with the online form they would like to have changed, amended or improved. We have taken that on board in what we have developed. It does all these additional things. For instance, there was no greening last year. It certainly provides a lot of assurance around that for farmers. Certainly, it is very important that anybody who has, or is potentially close to, greening requirements should use it. For anybody who has positive greening requirements, I say, "Yes, we have paper available, but it cannot help you." When you fill in the paper form, it cannot tell you whether you have met your requirements, whereas the online form can. I would certainly recommend it very strongly for people who have positive greening requirements.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I suppose I should have declared an interest, being a recipient of single farm payment. I do that now. I notice that there were almost 31,000 applications this year, which is down from something like 38,000 the year before. Do you anticipate that that will be reduced more?

Ms Rooney: That is one of the big unknowns that we have. Before Christmas, we did the active farmer exercise. We wrote out to about 7,000 farmers, because we did an analysis of data within the Department, and we said, "According to the records, you may not meet the active farmer control next year. We are not planning to send you an application form, unless you advise us that you are." Some 2,000-odd came back, which means that 5,000 did not come back. That does not mean that they cannot apply. Yes, they can. They are not going to get a paper application pack. They can go online or ask for a paper form, if they wish, but that should be 5,000 fewer. However, there is the big unknown about new people who will come in. There are definitely people out there who were farming on 15 May 2013 but did not get single farm payment. Certainly, a small number of those will come forward. New entrants will come forward, and young farmers may come forward. So there are sources of additional applicants, but the number of them is one of the unknowns in this.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I would have thought so.

Right, we will have our next presentation; we have half an hour.

Ms Rooney: Jason will run you through the communication processes, and Sharon will work the buttons.

Mr Jason Foy (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development): My presentation is the shortest of the three.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Good.

Mr Foy: I will take you through the efforts we are undertaking to communicate with farmers on area-based schemes. We have a number of activities that have been ongoing over the last number of months. At its highest level, we have a communication strategy and plan. We also have a group of staff across the Department who are looking at our communications activities and ensuring that they are consistent across each of the business areas in the Department. We meet regularly with stakeholders — the Ulster Farmers' Union, NIACA, NIAPA and the SDA group. There is also a team that has responsibility for managing communications on area-based schemes.

I move now to the communication channels. We have a number of mechanisms by which we communicate with farmers. Information is available on the DARD website and from DARD Direct offices. There have been, and will continue to be, a number of press articles in the farming press on the subject of the new schemes.

I have touched on stakeholder engagement.You may be aware that there are a number of roadshows that the Department has been putting on across Northern Ireland over the last week or so, and they will continue as we get closer to the application period. A number of workshops have also been held on the issue of greening, aimed at those with positive greening requirements in particular. Finally, there are some direct mailing efforts. There are letters of information and bulletins through the helping farmers comply route. There are also the single application packs themselves, which, as Teresa has said, will issue towards the end of this month.

Of the scheme guidance that has been devised so far, the key one is the guide to area-based schemes, which will be included in the paper single application form packs and is also available on the website. Notes of guidance to assist applicants to complete their forms will also be included in the pack, and there will be a number of other guides relating to specific schemes and specific aspects of area-based schemes in general — the young farmers’ payment, the guide to land eligibility, the regional reserve and the private contract clause. They are all available online at the moment. The scheme guidance that is not yet available will be available very shortly. That will include the guide to the greening payment in 2015. The guide to the review of decisions, which Pauline has mentioned, is very similar to our current procedure. There will also be the guide to the ANC scheme. Those will all be made available very shortly indeed.

In addition to that, on the DARD website we have a number of question-and-answer briefings. There are copies of articles that were published in the farming press. There are other information bulletins and a series of bulletins under the branding Countdown to CAP, which have been published over the last number of months, and copies of presentations that are made at roadshows and various other public fora. DARD Direct offices are a key port of call for applicants to obtain information and have queries answered. We can direct them further for other advice for particular queries. At the DARD Direct offices, applicants will also register for the young farmer payment and the regional reserve. There are hard copies of the application packs and all of the guidance on request, and applicants can also make changes to their maps at the DARD offices.

The single application pack will issue at the end of this month, on or around 27 March. The contents of that pack will be very familiar to most applicants. There will be a covering letter and the three parts of the form. There will be the notes for guidance booklet on how to complete the form itself, as well as the booklet on area-based schemes in 2015 accompanied with some other DARD promotional material, particularly encouraging applicants to submit online.

That covers our communication efforts so far.

Mr Byrne: Thank you for the presentation. Given that we are into a new scheme and that there is some uncertainty about what the outcome will be in terms of the processing, will there be more dedicated staff in the DARD Direct office dealing with queries in person for farmers, or will we carry on with the same number of staff as we had before? This is an issue that is of concern to some farming people who may not have a farm advisory person.

Ms Rooney: The information, guidance and business-decision support tools on the website are our primary source for farmers. We encourage them to look at that information, Joe. We are seeking to build up the question-and-answer section as questions come in, either over the helplines or query lines that we have talked about, at meetings that we are doing, or in our offices. We are building up that source of information, because when a farmer asks a new question, it is very likely that another farmer will ask a similar question. That is the primary source of information that we signpost farmers to. If they cannot use it, are uncomfortable using it or do not have access to it, the DARD Direct offices are there to provide support. They are only open during office hours, whereas the stuff on the website is available every day of the week, at all hours of the day. The DARD Direct offices are available and can provide that type of support.

As I said in my opening remarks, in our experience, 80% of farmers leave thinking about their application until the last two weeks of the application period. That makes for a very, very busy time, and is also stressful for them, because they have left it until there is a lot to do in a very short period. We encourage farmers to think about it and make their applications earlier. I would be very grateful if you could, where possible, encourage people to look at their applications earlier, think about them and ask questions, because there is a lot of time for answering queries now. At the very end, however, when suddenly 80% of farmers are trying to do their applications all at once, there definitely could be congestion as staff resources are put under pressure. Our advice is this: please look at it early. Things like mapping and young farmer registration and regional reserve registration contain a lot to think about. If farmers start early and forget something, we can say, "You've forgotten something," whereas if they turn up on 15 May at 3.30 pm, it is much more difficult for them. If you can, encourage people, as we certainly will in our coverage.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Do you anticipate a lot of problems or duplication this year?

Ms Rooney: We are certainly asking people to think very carefully about what they do. The requirement for people to declare all the land that they are using could make a difference. Until now, landowners have claimed for land. However, if people actively claim for the land that they are using, we should not end up with a lot of problems.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Many farmers, including myself, left a few acres that we did not activate when putting in our single farm payment application, purely because of the inspection. There is almost always something found. Farmers cannot do that this time. Can farmers leave a few acres or hectares that they do not actually activate entitlements on, to offset any ground found ineligible in an inspection? It seems common sense.

Dr Crowe: We are advising that clearly ineligible areas, or specific areas that may become ineligible during the year, should not be activated. One example is a site with planning permission, which is likely to be built on in that year; it is reasonable to leave that area off. Barring, however, those types of ineligible areas, we expect farmers to activate all the land that they are declaring. It is predicated on the fact that they check their LPIS maps carefully, look at the MEA and deduct ineligible land from the MEA. We will take a reasonable approach in relation to farmers who are concerned about areas of ineligible land in their fields and wish to leave very small areas off. We would not expect to see whole fields or big proportions of fields left off. In many respects, there is little or no incentive for farmers to do that in activating the number of entitlements, which will become increasingly important as we move towards a flat rate.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Yes, but does it really matter to the Department if there are one or two hectares left off? I cannot work out the rationale of that.

Dr Crowe: There is greater interest in underdeclaration because it could have an impact on the greening requirements and understanding the use of the land. That is why the Commission is more interested in underdeclaration this time around.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Will there be a small area of tolerance one way or the other?

Dr Crowe: Again, we would look at the justification that a farmer might identify as to why an area of land was left off.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): If a farmer has, for instance, a large area of 200 hectares and did not put in one hectare, is there a tolerance in regard to that?

Dr Crowe: We would look at that one hectare on the basis of whether that was a perception of ineligible land and whether the farmer was concerned about that. We would base it on that. We would always look closely at the circumstances. As I have said, it is very reasonable for small areas of a field to be left off if a farmer is concerned about the eligibility of land. That is the only circumstance I can foresee.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): As I mentioned earlier — I had an email this morning on the issue — there is concern that England, Scotland and Wales have a degree of tolerance on grazing licences which we do not seem to have in Northern Ireland. Is it possible for you to look into that?

Ms Rooney: Certainly, William. We will look into that and try to find out what the issue is behind that. We will let you know.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Will you do that? This guy is quite well known in Northern Ireland in relation to dealing with farmers. I would have thought that he has his facts right, although I could be wrong about that.

Ms Rooney: We will look into it. It is not something that I am aware of, so we will look into it and let you know.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I understand the Department's position up to a point, but I know for a fact that guidelines have been given by individual members of the Department. When I put that to you, it is still very vague, and that is going to be a difficulty for farmers.

Ms Rooney: I would hope that we could be as clear as we can around the active farmer requirement. There are those three conditions; you can repeat them and they are written down, and you have to meet all three. That should be the guidance that the Department is providing.

Mr Elliott: I am a wee bit reluctant to bring it up again, but we have a wee bit of time. Obviously I appreciate that point about the three criteria. I do not know how it will go legally, because I am sure there will be a test case or two, but you could probably argue strongly that they still hold those three positions and meet those three criteria but not as far as the Department goes. Would that be reasonable?

Ms Rooney: You are talking about a landowner trying to influence what happens on his land by another farmer who is actively using it.

Mr Elliott: Yes.

Ms Rooney: We would say that, while he may be making some management decisions, the majority of them, as well as the risks and benefits, are for the person actively using the land.

Mr Elliott: I am only saying. There will probably be a difference between the interpretation of some people and that of DARD, which is not unusual, to be fair.

I have one other question about payments. If someone claimed SFP on land that they had in conacre as the active farmer last year but the person who owned the land took it back this year, what would happen to the payments that the person had on it last year? Can they stack that on their own?

Ms Rooney: Do they hold the entitlements?

Mr Elliott: Yes.

Ms Rooney: The entitlement value is within their pot, and they will spread that over the land that they claim this year.

Mr Elliott: They can still do that. OK.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I am sure that there will be differences of opinion on this, but thank you very much again.