Letters have issued to 6,276 farmers notifying them of the preliminary calculation of their permitted stocking levels for the 2003 ewe premium year on foot of the commonage framework plans. In 4,183 cases there was a requirement to destock on existing levels. More than 650 farmers who had previously had quota frozen will have some restored. The remainder will have no further destocking requirement since their frozen quota already constitutes a sufficient reduction in stocking levels. The average net destocking requirement is 20 ewes per farmer.
The freezing of ewe quota on some commonages is the outcome of an agreement between my Department and the EU Commission in 1998, which secured generous REPS payments of up to €242 per hectare to farmers with commonage. This agreement was reached at a time when overgrazing by sheep, particularly on commonages in the west, had reached a point where the Commission had threatened to stop all REPS payments on those areas. My Department had had to suspend the processing of REPS applications in the six western counties that included large areas of commonage. As a result of the 1998 agreement with the Commission, however, an additional €7 million per year is now being paid on top of the basic REPS payment to the 3,700 farmers with commonage land who are in REPS. This represents an average annual additional payment of €1,800 per farmer and it brings the total average annual payment for REPS farmers with commonage land to €7,100.