Minister Heydon announces opening of €28 million scheme for suckler farmers
- Foilsithe: 13 Lúnasa 2025
- An t-eolas is déanaí: 13 Lúnasa 2025
Increase in number of animals eligible for payment
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon TD, today confirmed that the 2025 Beef Welfare Scheme has now opened for applications.
Minister Heydon commented:
“This year’s scheme represents a substantial increase in funding compared to 2024. It offers farmers an opportunity to complete a wider range of straightforward measures along with an increase in the upper limit on eligible animals. To give farmers the maximum opportunity to plan, I announced details of this scheme back in April. These practical measures are aimed at optimising animal performance throughout its lifetime.’’
The Beef Welfare Scheme (BWS) will support farmers in meal feeding suckler calves at weaning and will allow them to undertake other voluntary actions to maximise their scheme payments. As in previous years, all suckler farmers who have eligible calves born on their holdings between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025 are eligible to apply for this scheme.
Applications must be lodged online through agfood.ie with a closing date of 24 September 2025. There is no facility for late applications to ensure that payments to participants who have passed all the necessary validation checks can commence in December 2025.
Suckler farmers can simultaneously participate in both the BWS and the five-year Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP). Farmers who take part in both will be eligible to earn up to €225 per cow/calf pair for the first 22 pairs in a herd.
Concluding, Minister Heydon said:
“This scheme is worth €28 million to suckler farmers. It reaffirms the Government’s ongoing support for the sector and I would encourage all eligible farmers to check the terms and conditions and submit their applications on time. Coupled with the SCEP, these targeted supports will help safeguard the future of suckler beef production.”
Full terms and conditions of the scheme, including details of penalties where non-compliances are identified, are available here.
Participants are reminded to retain copies of receipts for the meal feeding and for the vaccination and testing actions, if they also choose those options. They should maintain these records and submit them, on request, to the Department to facilitate efficient processing of payments.
BWS participants who are also participating in the Parasite Control Consult under the Targeted Advisory Service on Animal Health (TASAH) and who wish to carry out the faecal egg count action under that scheme should not select the faecal count option in the 2025 BWS.
ENDS
Notes for Editors
The meal feeding action is mandatory but farmers have the option to vaccinate calves against clostridial diseases and/or calf pneumonia as well as to carry out faecal testing or forage testing where it suits their production systems.
Farmers (or a FAS advisor acting on their behalf) must indicate at application stage which, if any, voluntary actions they intend to complete. They will have the option at application stage of selecting a lower number of animals for the vaccination action than for the meal feeding action, if they so wish. If the testing action is selected, the number of animals eligible for payment will be the number of animals selected for meal feeding at application stage.
In the event of the scheme being oversubscribed, a reduction in the maximum number of animals eligible for payment may be applied on one or more actions.