Mr. Paul Savage:

Comparison between the Pillar 1, BISS and CRISS payments and the ACRES payments or between the Portlaoise payments and the Wexford payments has been made several times. I see everybody in the Department as in this together. We are all trying to get payments out to farmers as quickly as we can. The distinction is probably not helpful. I have to point to the reality that the ACRES scheme and environmental schemes in general over recent years have been more complex. They are more complex than Pillar 1 schemes. There is more to do within them. There are more criteria to be satisfied and more validations and checks to be carried out before payments are made across those schemes because of the complexity associated with them. They are very different schemes. The point at which things are done over the course of the year has become more complex. The system has become more complex because we now have a results-based system in place for ACRES. The nature of the individual schemes the Senator is talking about is very different. They require a whole range of other specialties. They require different types of IT functionality and different processing regimes. On the ACRES side, that system and our system are intricately connected in how they work. We need to make sure the two are in sync. It is a very big exercise but the nature of the schemes is very different. It is much more complex on the environmental side than on the Pillar 1 side. The complexities and delays we have experienced are associated with that. I will be very clear. As I have said a couple of times, the Department and I accept responsibility for the scheme not having been rolled out in the way we would have liked and in the way it should have been rolled out and we are taking steps to resolve that.