Farm businesses affected by the flooding and landslides in the North West of Northern Ireland in 2017 are set to be boosted with funding support.

In August 2017 farmland was damaged by Storm Lorenzo and the Department provided immediate assistance to farmers on the ground in addition to the provision of £500,000 for remedial works by the Loughs Agency.

A total investment of £2.7 million has begun being issued to the appropriate businesses after Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots' confirmed the funding this July.

-- Advertisement --

Minister Poots said: "Earlier this year I visited farmers in the North West whose farms were impacted by the flooding and landslides as a result of Storm Lorenzo. I heard about the challenges they faced at the time and the work required since then to restore land back to productivity. There is no doubt that it was a severely stressful time for those farmers, both financially and emotionally.

"As a result, I was very keen to provide some financial support to compensate for their loss of income and restoration costs. I subsequently announced, in July, that I had allocated funding to support farmers in the area and I'm pleased that 200 farmers in the North West will begin to receive payments from my Department this week."