Boyd Douglas, TUV Assembly candidate for East Londonderry, has expressed his amazement that the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has suspended updating of Farm Maps because of the forthcoming changes in mapping procedures.  Mr. Douglas, who is a dairy farmer, said that such an action is quite incomprehensible given that the ACS/Single Farm Payments Documents had to be lodged by the 16th of May and the field areas had to be accurate.

There was a constant stream of minor changes taking place and the farming community relied on the service provided to ensure that the measurements were correct and up to date.

Given that such a hard line was now being taken on this whole issue surely the Department must have known that the service should have remained in place until at least after the 16th May - and preferably until the proposed changes were in place. 

The decision to suspend the service should be reversed immediately before a lot of farmers get into trouble with single farm payments because minor amendments could not be easily made to farm maps and field measurements.

What has happened said Mr. Douglas was ‘just plain daft’.