Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if any other country is doing what Ireland is doing, but I suspect very few countries have the capacity to do what we are doing, which is to assess every land parcel in the country accurately and to see if there is an overclaim. Some 7% of farmers are affected above the 3% figure. We then need to work out with the farmers why that is. If there is reason to do so we need to go out and carry out a physical inspection of the land. This year, we are proposing to go through it in as much detail as we can and work out with farmers what was eligible and what was not, and why it was not eligible so that we can ensure that money that should not have been drawn down is paid back.

We need to take an approach to the spending of public money that is transparent and beyond question. If we do not do that, the Commission will take an aggressive approach to this, make its own estimate and apply a disallowance, for which every farmer will have to pay. I encourage farmers to use the appeal system that is in place. We want to be as helpful as we can in getting farmers under the 20% threshold and getting farmers under the 3% threshold when we can. Everything we do here is being monitored and audited by the Commission. It is not open to me to make some kind of arbitrary policy decision that because somebody has a small farm and a small payment, we should just ignore a payment on land that was not eligible. That option is not open to me, as the Commission has made very clear. We are adopting those options that are open to me. We will work with farmers on a case-by-case basis.

The Deputy is right in saying that most of the farmers who have problems in terms of the 20% have small holdings. There are a few big ones - only 400 of those - but most of them are relatively small farmers. There are issues we need to go through with those landowners and farmers explaining why the land is not eligible. Where there is an overclaim of more than 20%, we plan on dealing with those individually with the farmer.