Northern Ireland-Farmers in a fighting mood.

THE Northern Constitution can now reveal that farmers who endured a two-night vigil to secure a new Government grant may have done so in vain.

Serious questions have been raised over the ’first-come, first-served’ method being deployed by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to distribute £6 million Farm Modernisation Scheme.

Michael Mann, a spokesman for the Agriculture Commissioner, said the department’s methods were "unacceptable" and broke EC rules.

"A first come, first served basis is not an acceptable way of doing this," he said.

On Tuesday night Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew said Brussels was aware of the scheme and that her department is now waiting on confirmation from the EC that the process can continue.

This comes after many farmers camped out at the eight designated application points across Northern Ireland, some arriving as early as Sunday night. Locally, farmers flocked to Coleraine’s Jobs and Benefits Office on the Artillery Road on Monday morning to begin a sit-out for grants from DARD’s new Farm Modernisation Programme.

At least 20 farmers were already queued outside the gates by 10am, with Bushmills beef farmer, Daniel Ramage, being first in line, arriving at the office at 1.30am on Monday morning.

He said it was the necessary move to ensure his chances of obtaining the grant, with each farmer permitted to enter only one application form to secure funding. Farmers are able however, to submit three forms if they are for different farms.

He said: "We’re doing it in shifts. I wanted to come down to guarantee the funding. We’re hoping to get slurry tankers, cattle gates and other equipment with the money."

Some of the early-bird farmers had no choice but to put their work to one side for the day, or at least part of it, to keep their place in the queue. Others were forced to employ additional staff to keep things running smoothly while they were gone.

"I’ve had to pay somebody to do the work at home," Coleraine farmer, ’number 14’, said. Farmers had two methods of applying for the funds, they could post their application into DARD offices for the Tuesday morning opening, or they could apply in person.

Questions also remain over how the money is to be divided between these two types of applications.

On Monday, one farmer said: "The grant opens tomorrow morning (Tuesday, February 17) at 9 o’clock. There’s only a limited number of forms getting approval, half in the post and half in the queue.

"The post is done by a lottery and the half in the queue are spilt up across the eight offices in Northern Ireland."

However, another farmer, from Garvagh told the Constitution that he had been informed by the Department of Agriculture that two-thirds of the funding would be allocated to applications made in person and only one-third to applications made by post.

He said: "No one seems to know what is the right way of it. Also, no one has been able to explain how they will treat all the applications that arrive by post on Tuesday morning, surely they will all arrive together in the morning post, so how do they decide which order to consider them in, on a first-come, first-served basis?

"The way this whole affair has been handled is definitely not fair. These funds are part of the Rural Development Programme, so this money is actually skimmed off all farmers’ funds through the modulation of our subsidies, yet not all farmers will get a portion of it."