Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

It reminds me of the case of the widow woman who by mistake was on the rural social scheme while in receipt of a widow's pension. She was inadvertently overpaid by the rural social scheme. She did not mean to cheat the scheme by €2,300. In fairness to the Department it did not hit the poor widow woman. I would say the ordinary plain people of Ireland would rather spend the fraction of the euro themselves. We did not reclaim it. We told her she owed us the money but we did not claim it. The maps I gave the Minister are typical of a large number of maps in the west of Ireland. They involve 0.01 ha. Until recently the people or the officials had no way to measure this accurately. Suddenly people are being penalised 15 times for errors involving 0.01 ha. Some cases come to a judgment call as to whether scrub is a forage area and whether it can be grazed in the summer or winter. It is bizarre.