£5 million-plus rescue package for Northern Ireland farmers hit by severe blizzards

A £5 million-plus rescue package will be offered to farmers who have lost livestock in the severe blizzards that have hit Northern Ireland, Stormont ministers have agreed.

Affected farmers will be eligible for hardship payments from a pot of emergency funding while the power-sharing Executive has also agreed to pick up the tab for disposing of the thousands of animals killed in the huge snow drifts that have enveloped parts of the region.

Ministers made the commitments at an Executive meeting in Stormont Castle in Belfast as helicopters from both the RAF and Irish Air Corps continued the operation to drop feed bales to those farms still cut off.

PA