As farmers across the State prepare to refuse access to Department of Agriculture inspectors making unannounced visits from today, the department has said that 92 per cent of farms being inspected are pre-notified of the visits.
Under the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) and the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme, (DAS), worth €1.55 billion annually to farmers, the department said it was required by the EU to carry out certain levels of on-the-spot inspections on applicants.
"For the 2006 schemes, 8,200 farmers have had their holdings selected for on-the-spot inspection out of some 130,000 applicants under the SPS. Over 100,000 of these are also applicants for DAS," according to a statement at the weekend.
It said that departmental policy towards on-farm inspection had been to give 48 hours notice in all cases but this had been questioned by the EU Commission in July last and its unacceptability conveyed to department in a formal communication in August.
"As a result, some 650 farms out of 130,000 involved in the SPS were subsequently selected for unannounced inspection.
"The balance of inspection cases, representing 92 per cent of the 8,200 farms selected for SPS/DAS inspection in 2006, are all pre-notified to the farmer, who is given the maximum advance notice allowable under the regulations, 48 hours notice."
It added that cross-compliance penalties imposed on farmers last year, the first year of the Single Payment Scheme, amounted to €330,000 out of payments of €1.2 billion, an average of €250 for each penalised farmer.
"At the request of the farm bodies, the department is committed, in the Charter of Rights for Farmers 2005-2007, to carrying out all SPS and DAS checks during a single farm visit in most cases," it said.
The statement added the department was committed to a strategy of giving farmers 14 days' notice of farm inspections.
"The matter has been raised with the commission on a number of occasions since 2004, particularly in the context of the Irish situation where we are applying a fully decoupled and essentially area-dependent SPS."
It added that Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan had taken the matter up with the EU Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, and last week with her German counterpart, Horst Seehofer, who takes over the presidency of the Council of Agriculture Ministers in January.