Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to deal with the LPIS. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine writes to the farmer setting out that he or she has over-claimed for a parcel of land, stating the range of penalties that apply depending on the extent of the over-claim. In other words, the farmer gets a lot of paper but very little information.

When the farmer gets the letter, unless he or she can pull out the original application and check the number of hectares and do the sums, he or she will not know the penalty. The farmer will come to the clinic run by the public representative, but without the area aid application, the Deputy is at sea.

The public representative will table a parliamentary question asking what the penalty is and it is nearly impossible to find out from the Department what it is. I am fairly good at reading the material that comes from the Civil Service but it is difficult enough to figure out what the Department is trying to tell the farmer and what the penalty is. At the end of the day, the farmer wants to know why he is being hit and the extent of it. In most cases, the Department does not tell him or her what he or she is being hit for, and the person must do the calculation. While he Department has a computer, the farmer does not have one.