Vol. 411 No. 1
250 Mr. O'Keeffe asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the reason farmers, who have been in receipt of cattle headage payments for years, are now asked to produce title to their farms before they will be issued with the current payment.
There is a forage area limit in the disadvantaged areas schemes which limits payment to a maximum of 1.4 livestock units per forage hectare. In order to apply that limit, it is necessary to know the forage acreage grazed by the animals of each applicant — for this reason the acreages stated on applications are being cross-checked with copy folios, title deeds etc. to ensure their accuracy. As it is not possible to do this for every applicant in one year, it is being done on a phased basis over a number of years — that is why some farmers whose statements of acreages in some previous years were accepted as accurate are now being asked for documentation to verify that their acreages have indeed been stated accurately.
