The following question was posed to Commissioner Phil Hogan at an IFA meeting at Goffs Co. Kildare on the 24th of April 2017:

My name is Paddy Fitzgerald, from Co. Tipperary. I am 79 years old now.

I signed an Early Farm Retirement Pension Scheme Contract with the EU in 1995.

To be admitted to the ERS I was obliged to undertake to cease all commercial farming activity definitively in return for a 10 year Pension.

The Single Payment qualifying years were 2000,2001 and 2002.

Only people who were actively farming as farm owners or lessees were entitled to the Single Payment.

I could not be farming in those years as I had a prior ERS contract with the EU.

Prior to the advent of Milk Quotas there was another EU Scheme a Milk Cessation Scheme Contract where some milk producers were paid not to produce milk for a period of 4 years.

When Milk Qoutas were introduced the EU decided to deny those milk producers the right to produce any Milk after the 4 year period even though the then contract only lasted for 4 yrars.

The European Court of Justice ruled that those Milk Producers were entitled to Milk Production Rights equal to the quantity produced before they entered into the Milk Cessation Scheme

Those Mulder farmers were allowed Milk Quota equal to the last year that they produced milk and were compensated for loss of income for the years when they were not allowed to produce milk.

The difference between those Mulder farmers and the ERS farmers was that the Mulder farmers were compensated because they had a prior contract with the EU .

The ERS farmers who also had a prior contract with the EU not to go back farming definitively were not compensated.

The EU are now recouping the pensions paid to those ERS farmers left without the Single Payment
and naked acres since the area Aids were removed from their farms and put into the Single Payment.

The Farm Organizations engineered those ERS contracts with the Department of Agriculture but they
didn’t see to it that they were honoured. WILL THEY SUPPORT US NOW.

Some of those pensioners are dying every day. Their numbers are now thin on the ground and the ones
left do not have the time left to them or the resources to go to the European Court to get the same kind of ruling that the Mulder farmers got.

This issue was raised with Commissioner Hogan by Matt Carthy Sinn Fein MEP months ago.

How does Commissioner respond to that issue in the short term. Will we now get the Single Payment back dated equal to the Area Aids that were taken from our farms?