EU orders us to pay back €1m in farming subsidies
THE Irish government will have to return over €1m in misspent farm subsidies as part of an EU-wide clawback of €145m.
The demand came following a financial audit of Department of Agriculture spending which found some payments to farmers had fallen outside official deadlines.
It related to payments made under the special beef and dairy cow extensification scheme and suckler cow payments made in 2005 but relating to previous years.
The department said that there was always a proportion of payments which fell outside the deadline because of complexities in individual cases and the large volume of payments made.
There had been particular difficulties meeting the extensification payment deadlines because stocking densities had to be verified first.
Anticipated
"It should be pointed out that the payments disallowed compare to anticipated EU receipts of almost €1.8bn in 2007," the department said in a statement.
Italy and France were singled out as the worst offenders for misspending farm subsidies, the European Commission said this week.
Italy had to return over €76m that was incorrectly spent in the olive oil sector, with offences including weak controls, poor inspection of oil mills and failure to carry out enough spot checks, while they were also docked another €6m for problems with fodder payments and financial documents.
France had to pay back nearly €50m because of problems in its fruit and vegetable sector, with Ireland one of nine other countries that had to pay back smaller amounts.
The EU Commission monitors accounts several times a year to check that farm subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy, amounting to some €44bn a year, are being properly spent. If not, offending countries are ordered to return money, and if they fail to comply, the Commission can halt the subsidies.
"This is taxpayers'money and we have to ensure effective controls on how it is used," said EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.
