Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I can understand why the Department would need a national database because of its role of oversight and can understand why it would need to take data from the farm assist programme in order to help it process payments or whatever else it has to do. However, I do not see how it could be to the Department's benefit to develop its own software to do all this work, licensing the software to farmers and entering into a commitment to support them in this regard. That is what puzzles me.