Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 16 December 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs

European Court of Auditors Annual Report 2014: Mr. Kevin Cardiff

12:30 pm

Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

I will not go through it. It is nonetheless important because it is money that, within the rules, should not have been spent. The biggest area of spend is natural resources, mostly agriculture. In agriculture, the most frequent error was the over-declaration of parcels of land. One of this year's examples is the declaration in Spain of a motocross track as being all agricultural land. Most errors are not like that. Most of them are 3%, 4% or 5% over-declarations. It is not that millions of farmers are making huge fraudulent claims; it is that there are many small over-claims.