Mr. Paul Evans:

Deputy Ó Cuív asked about the number of applicants. The number of people who are paid a single farm payment at present - it will change next year - is 123,000. The remaining 8,000 to 9,000 farmers submit a single payment form every year and declare eligible land. Most of them are in receipt of the disadvantaged areas scheme payment or REPS, now AEOS, or possibly the organic scheme payment. There are 132,000 farmers on our database making an application in 2013 with eligible land. Many of those will get entitlements if they were farming in 2013 under the new regime, so they will be in receipt of the basic payment from 2015 onwards.

The Deputy mentioned the map he showed the Minister during the discussion on the Estimates. We have looked at that map and it is accurate. There is an issue in our system. We started digitising in 1995 or 1996 using the Ordnance Survey map. A great deal of work has been done on that database since then and there is what is known as a nudge issue with the lines one might see. We can correct it most of the time when we are printing the map. However, when one is working on the system, one might see the digitised line perhaps inside the fence whereas it is gone onto the road on the other side. We are aware that it is an issue, but it does not affect the accuracy of the area that is measured. In that particular case, it did not.

The review that was undertaken went on for a number of years, from 2007 to 2009. That was a limited review. We did not have the technology we have now to be able to go through 900,000 parcels in a few months and it was entirely based on risk. It was based on farmers whom we asked in 2008 to tell us where the farm hub was. We identified farmers or applicants who told us the farm hub was in a parcel on which they were claiming 100%. They were clearly risk cases, so it was limited to those.

A full review was not conducted. Nobody was ever told at any stage, during or subsequent to that review, that everybody else was clear. That was not said, absolutely not said.

I will now deal with the situation in regard to applicants. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine ran a major media campaign in 2010 which we followed up with direct correspondence to farmers to get them to take areas ineligible for EU payment purposes, out of the farm acreage. We wrote to all farmers, enclosing the map of their lands, asking them specifically to identify on the map roadways, scrub, buildings, forest and any other ineligible features that were not shown on the maps, which dated from 2004 and 2005 and take this out of the total acreage. To emphasise the point, written in red typeface in the letter running to a page and a half, was a request to please deduct the acreage of the parcels of lands that were ineligible for EU payments from the total acreage. This letter was sent to every farmer in the country. Clearly any farmer who reads the correspondence from the Department would have been fully aware of what he or she was meant to do and what he or she was obliged to do.

On the issue of smaller deductions, there is a tolerance at farm level of 0.1 hectare. Where we take out 0.1 hectares or less in any scheme year, that has no impact on payments. I take the Deputy's point on scrub. We took a decision, based on the ortho-imagery which has very good resolution. We take the point that there can be grazing but the grazing must be used. Sometimes when we go onto the ground we can see no animal has been there for a number of years. A farmer who has sought a review on the level of reduction for scrub will have a departmental official visit his farm. One of our major objectives for this entire exercise is to have our system as accurate as possible for the future. That is vitally important. The problem will continue to exist if we do not have that level of accuracy. We can only determine the level of scrub by sending somebody out to the farm. There are down-sides to seeking a review. Farmers are made aware by our staff of the three possible outcomes of a review: the situation can remain the same, the situation may get better but the outcome may be that the situation gets worse. That happens quite a bit. Farmers are told to be very careful and be sure they are on solid ground before making an appeal.

We took out roadways but many farmers have told us that the roadway has been grassed over and is now an area of green grass. We are putting all of that land back onto the maps. We are also aware that mistakes will occur when one is working on 900,000 parcels and redigitising one third, some 300,000 parcels, over a very short period. We will put our hands up if we make a mistake and we will correct it. Deputy Penrose raised that issue. Let me give an example, in one case in County Donegal, part of the parcel we were taking out seemed to be a lake, but during the internal review before it was taken out, what was thought to be a lake was a shadow on the screen. In that case, the penalty would have been more than 20% but following the review, the penalty is zero.

Rocks also cause issues. The ortho-imagery taken in December is a very different picture from that taken in July. We were very careful when considering rocks. Initially, we took out REPS 4 habitats, as they were seen as ineligible but all of those were put back. In some of the ordnance survey maps, drains were classified as rivers. A drain is fully eligible but we are able to identify all of those internally and correct our mistakes. We do not have to wait for a farmer to tell that to the Department. The same applied to the habitats issue, we were able to identify all REPS habitats on our system and put them back into the land parcels as eligible lands. This is an ongoing process. We are going through the appeals. Some 800 appeals are now with the digitising company, so that means the mistakes are being corrected and the areas in dispute are being reduced. Farmers will get refunds for 2013. When we have the outcome of the so-called rapid field visits and they show a reduction, refunds will be made to those farmer. Dr. Smyth has outlined what will happen to the cases with discrepancies in excess of 20%. The fine in these instances is very serious. There are 260 such cases in the LPIS database. We conducted an internal review of the case of each of those farmers, and that is how we discovered the case in County Donegal involving the shadow. We wrote to the farmers, explaining the situation and gave them a full set of maps and told when an official would visit. We also told them that they could have somebody with them when they were visited. We are now getting the results of those verification visits. Some of them will benefit from a reduction from over 20% to under 20% and that will be good news for some of the farmers.

We are very conscious of the impact of this on individual farm families. We want to ensure that no farmer is penalised for having declared eligible land, that our system is accurate and that we have carried out the task to the satisfaction of the Commission.