Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is the nub of the problem. It is fine that the Department wrote these letters to people, but most farmers thought they had made enough adjustments for the features, as Mr. Evans called them. Rocks are very hard to measure, scrub is always going to be a point of argument and other features are hard to measure when one gets down to the micro level of these maps. A farmer does not have a digital system to measure all of these elements so it is unfair to set him back five years. I do not have a huge problem with the small adjustments for the current year. If there is an adjustment of between €50 and €100 in the current year and it is claimed the land was not measured accurately, then most farmers will accept such decisions.

Let me return to the idea that the Department wrote and told a farmer the information. The farmer had no way of measuring and that is where the retrospective aspect is unfair. The common perception, be it right or wrong, was that the Department had checked the details and once a farmer got the payment he or she was in the clear. Everybody in rural Ireland would have thought that once the Department approved claims and made payments to farmers it was not possible that the claims could be wrong and the Department could claim the money back five years later. The retrospective element is the major problem, particularly when many cases involve very small pieces of land amounting to 0.1 of a hectare, when one hectare is 2.5 acres.