Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

About half of those said they were going ahead. I am glad to have the opportunity to raise this matter with the committee because we have a problem here. We issue all these approvals. Our debt, our outstanding commitment, mounts and mounts to tens of millions of euro. We cannot do that indefinitely. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform will not allow us to do that. We need to know how much we are actually going to spend each year or we will not be able to continue issuing approvals. It will block future approvals. We have a problem with people either not telling us what they intend to do and not simply withdrawing their approval or whatever.

We have not made a decision on that. It is up to the Minister to make the decision, but we definitely will have to consider new ways of doing business. At present, we are offering approvals for up to three years but if those approvals sit behind the clock on the mantlepiece, are not acted on and end up blocking other farmers from getting approvals, we have a problem on our hands. We will have to do something different on this, and that is the main problem we envisage.