Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

Yes, but this is a different issue. This is where EU auditors come in. These are not fines we have imposed on farmers. EU auditors come in and take the view that our regime is not strong enough in certain respects and that we have not done enough in terms of disallowing farmers. One could interpret the EU audit finding as saying that we should have imposed a further €180 million in fines in that period on farmers. I am using the word "fines". Technically they are not fines, but I accept it is the common word.

We are negotiating with the Commission about that at present. The reason I mention it is because of the question Deputy Fleming asked about how well we compare with others. The one area the Commission has identified as an issue for Ireland is land eligibility, specifically, land eligibility of marginal land. That is the area to which the potential disallowance relates. This is why we did a great deal of work on land eligibility during the previous few years. We issued a land eligibility booklet to every farmer in the country so they could ensure they were declaring the right land.

What this comes down to is the amount of land the farmer declares to us. Does he declare that it is all eligible, or does he decide to draw a line around a given area because he recognises that it is ineligible? That is the crucial thing. Let us suppose the farmer over-claims to us and then we pay. Then the auditors come in and decide that we have overpaid to the farmer. That is how we get in trouble. If we do an inspection of a farmer and find he has over-claimed, we will penalise the farmer in our normal process, but if we do not pick that up in our 5% of inspections - by definition 95% of the farmers are not inspected-----