Mr. Peter Welch:

We have been working hard in recent years to identify, generically, which schemes pose real obstacles for smooth implementation and which schemes are working well, more or less, in the sense of leading to legal and regular payments. We have an analysis of which sort of programmes lead to those results. That has featured heavily in our annual report over the past couple of years.

One of the key things we are doing in the report that Mr. Wojciechowski has presented is to look at the complexity of the programming documentation the Commission requires. Some of that complexity is bureaucratic but does not particularly affect the farmer as it is between Ireland and the Commission. We hope the farmer is not too affected by that. One element of that complexity is the wide range of schemes eligible for support under rural development programmes. There are 118 rural development programmes across Europe. Each one could be financing about 50 different schemes.

We are looking at an enormously complex universe of schemes. That is why we have to make some big choices about where we are going to focus our attention. Is there a way we can do some work which will cover more than one scheme at the same time? The key things we have been looking at over the past year, aside from these important reports, are the greening scheme which accounts for about 30% of direct payments to farmers and, emerging shortly, a report on the basic payment scheme that accounts for another 70%. We are focusing on those big schemes which affect every single farmer. We are trying to make sure that we provide a useful input so that it is right. One of the things we have achieved through this report is a much bigger awareness of the complexity involved in the programming. We were asked about the impact on the Commission's proposals. I am pleased the Commission seems to be looking at a slimmer and more strategic programming document in future. It is talking about bringing Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 together. We are seeing some impacts. I cannot promise we will be back in two years' time to look at Leader in Ireland. We have to look at everything else that is happening all across Europe, to see where the risks are and where we can have an impact. However, we are working very hard and providing a lot of useful information, which is helping target spending and industry programmes where they can make a difference.