Basic payment entitlements and wills

Basic payments are annual payments to farmers arising from various EU support schemes, and they are administered by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The amount of the payments varies, and one of the factors is the number of basic payment entitlements (BPEs) a farmer has. BPEs are not attached to land, although a farmer must farm land in order to claim them. BPEs can be left by will and should be specifically dealt with in a will.

Because they are not generally attached to lands, problems arise when a farmer has left land to a beneficiary, but the will was silent on who was to receive any BPEs the farmer might have. In these circumstances, the BPEs formed part of residue, which may not have been what was intended and may cause difficulty and hardship for the person receiving the land.

The European Union (Basic Payment Scheme Inheritance) Regulations 2017 (SI 639 of 2017) deals with this issue, and paragraph 4 of the statutory instrument provides as follows: “Where a deceased person bequeaths land in a will and (a) at the time of his or her death held an allocation of payment entitlements under Regulation 1307/2013, and (b) made no provision for those payment entitlements in his or her will, such payment entitlements (or share thereof) shall transfer with the eligible land unless there is a legal impediment preventing the transfer.”

The statutory instrument was signed on 21 November 2017 by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine.