An article in the German current affairs magazine, Der Spiegel, suggesting that Irish farmers are milking the EU budget is "ill-researched and unbalanced and contains more than a hint of national prejudice," according to the Irish Embassy in Germany.
The Spiegel article, published on Monday, said that Irish farmers obtain enormous subsidies from the EU for doing nothing, and in some cases make illegal gains and retain them by intimidating farm inspectors.
In a response sent to the magazine yesterday, the embassy said it was a pity the magazine had seen fit to publish an article containing such "blatant misrepresentations . . . The tone and much of the content of that article suggest the author had a number of prejudices which he then tried to prove with anecdotal evidence and misrepresentations."
All EU agricultural policies operating in Ireland also apply in all other EU member-states, the embassy says. The article had set out to create the impression that only Ireland benefited from these policies and schemes.
The article had pointed out that Ireland received a net gain from the EU agricultural budget while Germany was a net contributor. However, "agriculture is six times more important to the Irish economy than it is to Germany and indeed nearly three times more important than it is to the EU economy as a whole," says the statement.
"In these circumstances it is not surprising that Ireland would benefit more, proportionately, than Germany (and other member-states) from the agricultural budget.
"There is, of course, much more to the economics of the EU than agriculture, most notably the single market in industrial products from which the highly industrialised member-states benefit disproportionately. It is the overall balance of advantage, politically as well as economically, which matters in any objective assessment of the benefits of EU membership."
The embassy says the reference to illegal gains made by Irish farmers was "quite simply outrageous and totally out of line with the facts." The Department of Agriculture had an elaborate system of farm inspections operated by 220 inspectors. This system was supervised by three tiers of EU audits.
Yet the rate of disallowance of agricultural expenditure for Ireland was the lowest in the EU following these audits.
An edited extract from the Spiegel article appears on page 14