Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food

Delays in Departmental Scheme Payments: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

2:00 am

Mr. Francis Morrin:

Ultimately, however, we have had a very good response to that. There were a lot of advantages in that for farmers because once they had access, whether it was through a son, daughter, niece, nephew or themselves at home, they could do it whenever they wanted. They could complete that training in the middle of the night if they wanted. There are lots of advantages for those. I do not have the exact number here to hand - maybe I do - but we also provided in-person training sessions that we held around the country for those farmers, particularly targeted at areas where we knew there was lower uptake and yet, we had SCEP applicants at that time.

We had a total of 15,370 who did it online by the close of 19 December, which represents 92%. We had another 1,033, or 6%, who did it in person at some of those meetings. We had a total of 318, or 2%, who did not complete the training at all. We gave some of those additional time to complete it when they appealed. That reduced the number to 248 who were removed at the end for not completing the training at all. We really endeavour to provide as much help as we possibly can.

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