Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

I have, but all of them are interesting. I will deal with them as best I can in the order they were put to me. I will start with Senator Conway-Walsh. I take the Senator's point that farmers want human contact. The Department tent at the ploughing championships is amazing in terms of the thousands who visit. My colleague beside me, Kay Ryan, organises it and it is a sight to be seen as farmers come through in huge numbers. They do that because they want to see a human face. They come with all their problems, and the set-up in the tent is fantastic. If they need to, farmers can go from one part to another to get various issues sorted out, whether it is animal health, payments, GLAS issues or whatever. The Senator is right that they want the human contact. At the same time, we are going down a route of increasing automation and online services. Are they a contradiction? I do not believe so. Going down the online route means the initial trigger, the scheme application and so on, is done much more quickly.

In terms of what that has allowed this year, for example, farmers who previously submitted their claims on paper but on which a small error was made would have had them returned or the Department would called them to say it was completed incorrectly and the application might end up going back and forth and so on. That is not a contact a farmer wants. This allows pre-checks to be done before any penalty is applied on the basis of the online application. The farmer submits the claim but if there is something on it that does not make sense, we can contact him or her to say that they may incur a penalty and to have another look at it. That is a welcome development.

Where we have fallen down, and we fell down last year, which I admitted in my opening statement, was in terms of farmers who like to pick up a phone and call someone. The days of going into the local office are over. Farmers are busy and they do not have that much free time, but they like to pick up a phone and talk to a human being. Last year, we were introducing over 20 new schemes in the Department. Our staff numbers were way down and we were struggling. My colleagues did a fantastic job but where we fell down was in the responses on the telephone. Farmers could not get through to the Department. Deputies and advisers could not get through either, and we were getting it in the neck, so to speak, from everybody. A new system has been put in place and it seems to be working well. Currently, we are getting about a 75% response rate on telephone calls. That means when farmers ring, 75% of the calls are being answered on the spot while 25% of them go to voicemail and are answered within 24 hours. Approximately half of the queries that come in can be dealt with on the spot by the person who answers the phone. The other 50% are more complex and have to be referred to somebody who has more detailed knowledge, but the clearance rate on those is very high. That is the human contact farmers want. They want effective human contact. They are not looking to have a chat. The future is online applications and very effective telephone systems for people to follow up on their queries, problems, issues or whatever. I hope it will also mean that the Senator will get better responses to queries brought to her in her clinics.

On the national reserve, that is a policy decision for the Minister; it is above my pay grade.