Payments of £2.7M for flooding support begin to issue - Poots

Payments totalling £2.7million to support farm businesses affected by the flooding and landslides in the North West in 2017 have begun to issue, Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots has announced.

In August 2017 farmland was damaged by Storm Lorenzo and the Department provided immediate assistance to farmers on the ground in addition to the provision of £500,000 for remedial works by the Loughs Agency.

Minister Poots gave a previous commitment to consider a compensation package and announced in July of this year that he had allocated £2.7million in support for those worst affected by the flooding.

Minister Poots said: “Earlier this year I visited farmers in the North West whose farms were impacted by the flooding and landslides as a result of Storm Lorenzo. I heard about the challenges they faced at the time and the work required since then to restore land back to productivity. There is no doubt that it was a severely stressful time for those farmers, both financially and emotionally.

“As a result, I was very keen to provide some financial support to compensate for their loss of income and restoration costs. I subsequently announced, in July, that I had allocated funding to support farmers in the area and I’m pleased that 200 farmers in the North West will begin to receive payments from my Department this week.”

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