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. Paul Savage:

No, in general they have done what they need to do. They are in change of ownership in the sense of moving from one ownership status to another and we need to have our systems updated so we can handle that change of ownership. That is why, as I mentioned earlier, we have been trying to ensure we get that in place fundamentally and that it is working properly, because it affects a large number of people. Ownership is changing all the time and we have to be able to respond to that and be pretty proactive in how we handle it. That is what we are doing in putting that fundamental functionality in place. Those cases are affected by that particular circumstance. We have been in touch with farmers. We are in touch with farmers, in fact, about all the outstanding cases that are there. We have been trying to find out from them just what the situation is at the moment and telling them what we are doing to try to fix it. We are also trying to establish exactly of the 578 - and they may well be in the 299 as well - how many are potentially no longer participants in the scheme or are no longer interested in continuing in the scheme. Some of the calls we have made indicate there are issues with the application being lodged in the first place even though people did not actually intend to be in the scheme at all. Again, there are a range of issues, but we are establishing those circumstances from direct contact with the relevant people.

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