Yellow-card system for inspections would help reduce penalties – INHFA
INHFA President Vincent Roddy on his farm. Photo: Tricia Kennedy
A functioning ‘yellow card’ system for farm inspections would significantly reduce penalties on farmers, INHFA President Vincent Roddy has said.
Despite EU efforts to reduce the red tape burden of farm schemes and regulations, Roddy said Irish farmers are actually seeing their overall administrative burden increase.
“While the new EU proposals are a move in the right direction, and we welcome that, they need to be put in the context of increased CAP regulation and significantly increasing demands from State bodies, including the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and our County Councils,” he said.
With regard to CAP, Roddy maintained “that the current CAP Programme, even with these changes, is still far more demanding than the previous CAP Programme and multiples of what was demanded in CAP Programmes prior to that”.
In assessing the current proposals, Roddy welcomed the decision to exempt farmers under 10ha from inspections, but cautioned that these farmers “will, I understand, still be subject to satellite monitoring and obviously if they are deemed to be in breach of regulations, then penalties will apply”.
He added: “What has come from Brussels on this in recent weeks is a missed opportunity. If we go back to the yellow-card system promoted by Commissioner Hogan, there was then, and still is, an opportunity for real change.
“A real yellow-card system is about a second chance. So what needs to happen is when a farmer is deemed to be non-compliant on an inspection, then the inspector should:
“If, at this point, the issues remain, then we are moving into penalty territory, but I think most farmers would engage positively with such a system and penalties would definitely be reduced and, in most cases, eliminated.”
Roddy said there was growing concern around farm inspections from other State bodies, most notably our County Councils and the NPWS, and the fear is that this will intensify, especially if the Nature Restoration Law is ratified.
While he acknowledged that for every sector of society, there are rules and regulations that they have to comply, he said in the farming sector, it seems this has been brought to an extreme level with regard to the number of bodies that can now inspect, but also in terms of the consequences.
