Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes. The other issue the Deputy raised with me earlier as well was the issue of payments, which has been topical recently, and I will touch on that. On animal transport, however, the only recent change relates to cross-border transport whereby any transport of animals cross-border has to be registered in the tracing system. That is an EU requirement so that people know what is going from one jurisdiction to another.

Payments are something we discussed at this committee previously and something on which I have been clear in giving certainty and clarity to farmers on from earlier this year. In March, we wrote to all farmers outlining the payment schedule for this year so that they would know what it was in advance, particularly given the fact that it was a necessity to have some changes to the dates this year compared to what would have been the case over the past number of years given the logistical challenge of delivering the new CAP and building new systems to do that. From March, farmers were written to directly to inform them of the payment schedule, and that has been communicated on an ongoing basis since then. There is also a letter going to farmers this week reminding them of the dates that were laid out in March. All the officials in my Department are working hard to make sure we meet those dates that we laid out in March.

I have given a clear commitment as well that next year we will revert to the old dates. It is a logistical challenge. In fairness, the Department for many years has been one of the best performing across Europe on delivering dates within the year where the schemes are operating. That is something we want to maintain and continue. There are slight adjustments this year but we will revert next year.