Mr. Eddie Punch:

I thank the Senator for his comments. With regard to the farmers’ charter, we have been negotiating a new one for the last 12 months. One of the key issues has been the delay in payments, which became quite a protracted row and is still not resolved to our satisfaction, albeit there are some new developments in terms of the ACRES payments. On that, we would comment that it is unfortunate that it could not have been sorted prior to Christmas rather than now.

The issue of time limits is central to all of these issues. That is why we note the difference. On the one hand, we have proposals for legislation with very tight timeframes imposed on the farmer, but the reverse is not the case for Government officials in areas like the Department of agriculture, whether that be in terms of delivering payments on time or the way in which they treat people via inspections and penalties imposed. I have in my possession a letter to a farmer, dated 19 February 2024, setting out a 3% penalty as a result of SMR 1, which concerns nitrates. This applies to an inspection conducted - wait for this - on 5 November 2019. In my view, justice delayed is justice denied. It is scandalous that a penalty is being applied to a farmer in 2024 based on an inspection in 2019.

That is not acceptable in any circumstances and I will tell the committee why it is not acceptable. Under the old cross-compliance regime, there is a thing called recurrence. This means that if a penalty is imposed and the farmer has a subsequent issue on a similar SMR or GAEC, there is a trebling of the penalty on the second offence and a trebling on the third offence, and that applies up to 15%.

The Department also has leeway to say that if farmers continue to commit the same offence, misdemeanour or breach of a technicality, it can take the view this is being done intentionally and take all their payments away. If farmers have a penalty imposed in 2019 they could unwittingly make the same error in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Then they could potentially have a letter from the Department in 2024 accusing them of intentional behaviour. This could do absolute havoc in the form of penalties, which when accumulated in that way could cause serious damage to a farmer's financial viability. That is unacceptable. This leads to the grounds on which farmers may appeal to a review panel. Our concern is they are very restricted. Someone may make an appeal for review on the basis of error in fact or law, but that is designed to support a minimisation of appeals. It is designed to make a very narrow grounds on which a farmer might appeal. It is simply too tight and too narrow. It is possible someone could be penalised in 2024 for offences committed in 2019. In some cases these are not really offences and in the case of the nitrates it is a complex issue where someone inadvertently fed too much concentrate and as a result fell foul of the very complex regulations around nitrates, therefore, the idea that in 2024 that person could be subjected to this kind of unfair process I would say means we could be talking here about maladministration. It is simply not acceptable. I am not sure that under this legislation that person can apply to the review panel, because it is not clear there is an error in fact and law, depending on how the fine detail is written. On the nitrates case in point, I am thinking of a nitrates derogation farmer who is in the finishing business, which is a complex business where a person is buying and selling cattle in and out all the time and then there are the additional complications of chemical fertiliser applied, slurry, concentrates fed and all that. Even today there is no up-to-date information about where people stood in 2023 and that is not acceptable. People are getting nitrates figures far too late to be able to make accurate decisions about what cattle they buy, when they sell cattle, when they buy them and so on. All these things must be facilitated in this review panel discussion.