How to cross-check your BPS history against LPIS maps with free tools

::: official-advice-banner This article discusses land parcel records and scheme payment history. Always verify your details directly with DAFM or your Teagasc advisor before making any applications or appeals. :::

There's a certain frustration that comes every spring. You're filling in your BISS application, you pull up your land parcels on agfood.ie, and something doesn't look right. A parcel size you don't recognise. An eligible area that seems smaller than what you thought you were farming. A field that dropped off somewhere between last year and this year.

That's not bad luck. That's a gap between what DAFM has on their maps and what's actually happening on your farm. And it's worth fixing — because your payments depend on it.

The good news: the tools to check this are free. Your BPS payment history is online. Your LPIS maps are online. And an AI assistant can help you make sense of both in less time than it would take to ring DAFM and wait on hold.

Here's how to do it.

What LPIS actually is

LPIS stands for Land Parcel Identification System. In plain English, it's the official map of every agricultural field in Ireland that's registered for direct payments.

Every parcel has a reference number, a boundary drawn from satellite imagery, and an eligible area — the part of the land that DAFM will pay on. That eligible area excludes buildings, water, roads, scrub, and anything else that doesn't count as agricultural land under EU rules.

The LPIS is what DAFM uses to calculate your Basic Payment Scheme entitlements. It's also the basis for ACRES, TAMS, and most other scheme applications. Get it wrong, and every scheme you touch is affected.

Ireland's LPIS is updated regularly through satellite monitoring and ground inspections. According to DAFM, around 1.4 million land parcels are registered nationally. Even a small error in a single parcel — a boundary drawn 10 metres inside your fence, say, or an eligible area reduced by half a hectare — can reduce your payment by hundreds of euro a year.

Why your BPS history and LPIS maps can diverge

Your payment history shows what you were paid. Your LPIS map shows what DAFM thinks your land looks like right now. They're two different things, and they don't always agree.

Common reasons they diverge:

• Parcel updates after inspections — if your farm was selected for a land eligibility inspection and DAFM adjusted parcel boundaries, your map may have changed without you noticing
• Ineligible features added — scrub encroaching on a field, new drainage channels, temporary structures — these get flagged through satellite review
• Boundary changes from land purchases or leases — if you took on land recently, new parcels may not be registered correctly
• Historic entitlement calculations — your BPS entitlements were based on reference years (2013–2015 for most farmers). If parcels changed since then, the numbers may not align

This matters because the transition to BISS (Basic Income Support for Sustainability) — which replaced BPS from 01/01/2023 — carried over entitlement values from the BPS era. Any errors in your BPS history carry forward.

Step 1: Download your BPS payment history

Log in to agfood.ie with your MyGovID. If you haven't set up MyGovID yet, mygovid.ie is where to start — it's the same login used for Revenue, welfare, and most government services.

Once you're in:

1. Go to My Scheme Applications in the main menu
2. Select Basic Payment Scheme
3. You'll see a history of your annual applications, payments received, and any reductions applied
4. Download or screenshot the payment amounts and the parcel list for each year

Note the eligible area claimed and the eligible area accepted for each parcel, for each year. Any gap between what you claimed and what was accepted is worth investigating.

Step 2: View your current LPIS maps

Still in agfood.ie:

1. Go to Land Parcel Viewer (sometimes called the maps section)
2. Your registered parcels will appear on the map with their reference numbers and eligible areas
3. Click each parcel to see the area breakdown — total area versus eligible area
4. Compare the eligible area now with what you claimed in previous BPS years

If a parcel shows an eligible area of 3.2 hectares but you were claiming 3.8 hectares three years ago, something changed. The map may have been updated after an inspection, or there may be an error.

For a broader view, DAFM's open data portal publishes national LPIS datasets. These are more technical, but they let you see parcel data without logging in.

Step 3: Build a comparison — and where AI helps

This is where the work usually falls apart. You've got a PDF of your BPS history from 2019 to 2022, a table of current parcel areas from the map viewer, and no easy way to line them up.

An AI assistant can bridge this gap.

Copy your BPS parcel list from agfood.ie — parcel reference numbers, eligible areas claimed, eligible areas accepted, any reductions — and paste it into your AI tool of choice. Then copy your current LPIS parcel list alongside it. Ask something like:

"I have two lists of land parcels. The first is from my BPS history 2019–2022, showing what I claimed and what was accepted each year. The second is my current LPIS parcel areas. For each parcel number that appears in both lists, compare the eligible area now against what I was claiming. Flag any parcel where the current eligible area is more than 0.5 hectares smaller than what I was claiming in 2021 or 2022."

The AI will work through both lists methodically. It'll flag the parcels worth looking at and save you 45 minutes of squinting at spreadsheets. On an 80-cow suckler farm with 15–20 land parcels, that's a meaningful time saving.

A few things the AI can also help with:

• Summarising your payment trend — if your BPS payment dropped between 2019 and 2022, it can show you which parcels changed and by how much
• Drafting a query letter — if you find a discrepancy and want to write to DAFM about it, the AI can help you draft a clear, factual letter with the specific parcel references and figures
• Explaining LPIS terminology — eligible area, ineligible features, reference parcel — if any of the agfood.ie language isn't clear, ask the AI to explain it in plain English

The AI is working with the data you give it. If your BPS records are incomplete or the figures you paste in are wrong, the output will be wrong too. Check the source data first.

What it costs

Everything in this process is free.

• agfood.ie is free with a MyGovID login
• MyGovID is free
• DAFM open data is free, licensed CC-BY-4.0
• AI tools — most AI assistants offer free tiers that handle this kind of document comparison and text analysis without any payment required

The only cost is your time. A thorough cross-check of 15–20 parcels — downloading, comparing, flagging — typically takes 2–3 hours without help. With an AI assistant doing the comparison work, you're looking at 30–45 minutes.

If you find a genuine discrepancy, the potential recovery is significant. A parcel that lost 1 hectare of eligible area between 2020 and 2023 could represent €100–200 per year in lost BISS payments, depending on your entitlement value. Over three years, that adds up.

What to do if you find a discrepancy

If you spot a parcel where your current LPIS eligible area is noticeably smaller than what you were claiming in recent BPS years, don't assume the map is right.

Teagasc advisors can help you interpret LPIS records and advise on whether it's worth querying with DAFM. In cases where you believe a parcel boundary is wrong, there is a formal process to request a re-examination — your advisor will know the current procedure.

If an inspection resulted in a penalty you think was applied incorrectly, you have the right to appeal. The appeals process is set out in your DAFM correspondence, and Citizens Information has a plain-English overview at citizensinformation.ie.

Keep records of everything — screenshots of the map at different points, your BPS payment letters, any correspondence with DAFM. If you end up in an appeal, the paper trail matters.

Where to get help

• agfood.ie — agfood.ie — view your parcels, payment history, and scheme applications
• DAFM BPS information — gov.ie/bps — scheme rules and entitlement documentation
• Teagasc CAP supports — teagasc.ie — your local advisor is the fastest route to sense-checking what you find
• DAFM open data — opendata.agriculture.gov.ie — national LPIS datasets if you want to go deeper
• Citizens Information — citizensinformation.ie — appeals and entitlements in plain English

Common questions

My parcel areas look different on agfood.ie compared to what I applied for last year. Is that normal?

It can be. DAFM updates LPIS maps based on satellite imagery, inspections, and farmer submissions. If your map changed, there should be a note in your correspondence. If you can't find a reason for the change, query it with your Teagasc advisor — small adjustments to parcel boundaries can have a real effect on your payment over time.

Can I use AI to submit a query to DAFM for me?

No — the actual submission to DAFM has to go through the proper channels, either via agfood.ie, by post, or through your advisor. What an AI assistant can do is help you prepare: compare the data, identify the specific parcels in question, and draft a clear written query that sets out the facts. You still send it yourself.

The eligible area on one of my parcels dropped by almost a full hectare between 2021 and 2023. What happened?

Most likely it was flagged during a land eligibility inspection or satellite review. DAFM periodically checks whether land declared for payment meets the eligibility criteria. Scrub, rushes, and wet ground are common reasons parcels lose eligible area. If you believe the land is still eligible — because you've cleared the rushes, for example — you can provide evidence and request a review. Your Teagasc advisor can help you build that case.