Mr. Paul Savage:

As I said earlier, we are working on fortnightly payments over the next period. The remaining 14,000 participants will be paid on a fortnightly basis as those payments are cleared. The Department is working on the basis that we want to have the vast bulk of those paid by September, and by the time we get through the second pay run in September of this year. How quickly we get through those cases will depend on the nature of the queries that are outstanding in respect of them. When we process the payments and when we carry out our prepayment validations, there are always issues raised in terms of clarity. In addition, we have to get clarifications. This may be due to our own internal systems and making sure that information is, for example, consistent between this and ACRES or because of the direct communication we must engage in with advisers and farmers around for things like change of ownership, withdrawal of actions and particular elements that we have to resolve in the context of finance with the advisers. Work is ongoing. We have been doing all of that work over the past number of months. As we resolve those cases, we will issue payments on a fortnightly basis. It is our intention that the vast bulk of them will be paid in September, with the exception of those where there are genuine issues the context of change of ownership and other things.