Ireland-17,000 Very angry farmers waiting for money.

Building grants owed to 17,000 farmers hang in the balance as speculation on the Farm Waste Management Scheme (FWMS) reaches fever pitch. according to the Irish Independent.

Concern is growing that the Minister for Finance will refuse to give €400m needed by the Department to pay for grant aid under the FWMS.

Relations between the farm organisations and the Department have been hit by the controversy, with planned talks for yesterday postponed.

Minister Brendan Smith said there had been a massive surge in claims by farmers in the last week before the scheme closed at the end of December.

However, IFA president Padraig Walshe has insisted Department officials knew for months how many farmers had applied for the grants.

It is believed a staggered payment of the grant aid over the next four years is one of the strategies that could be pursued by the Government.

Minister Smith insisted that the outstanding monies would be paid to farmers, but, crucially, did not say when. A Department statement read: "The Department is undertaking a full review of the situation, including assessment of the number of fully-documented valid applications and estimation of the overall cost of the claims. The minister will be discussing the financial implications with the Minister for Finance. Payments are being held over for the moment pending the conclusion of the review."

A war of words has erupted between the various parties, with a spokesperson for the Department blaming farming organisations for giving the impression that many farmers would not be able to complete building work in time to qualify for the scheme.

"The word on the street was that people couldn’t get the work done. But yet we had 14,000 claims in the last week so somebody wasn’t telling the truth," the spokesperson said.

However, this accusation has been refuted by farm bodies.

Meanwhile, there is also growing concern over the future of REPS 4. Teagasc advisers and farm consultants rushed to submit hundreds of REPS plans for clients on the back of rumours the scheme would be suspended last Friday. The Department has said that the scheme is safe, but one source predicted there would be restrictions on participants of REPS 3 transferring to REPS 4.

It has also been suggested that numbers working in the Department and Teagasc could be cut by as much as 10pc.

While exact figures are not available, sources at the talks indicated that up to 500 redundancies could be sought from the Department and Tegasc.

Another expected casualty will see several Department and Teagasc offices around the country merged or closed.