All kinds cash in on EU’s €50bn agriculture budget

One Irish farmer handed over his land to his son free of charge in 2005 and he immediately qualified for €125,000 in payments — three times what his father had been eligible for. In the North, a farmer who qualified for €109,000 moved his 600 cattle to a relative's holding who then qualified for €40,000, the EU court of auditors discovered.

The auditors refused for the 12th year in a row to sign off on the EU's €105bn budget of which Ireland got €2.3bn — the eighth largest recipient of 25 in 2006. But while spending of the budget's biggest section, agricultural funds, had improved there were still problems.

The change from paying farmers grants based on the quantities they produced has resulted in problems, the court's Irish auditor Maire Geoghegan Quinn said. "All kinds of people have been qualifying for money including golf clubs and horse riding schools which I'm sure was never the intention and farmers have been increasing the amount of money they are entitled to by timing the transfer of their holdings between family members," she said.