Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 16 February 2017
Public Accounts Committee
2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 7 - EU Refunds and Levies in the Agriculture Sector
9:00 am
Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:
No. The bottom line would be - if the Chairman wants to cut straight to the chase - we could have attributed part but not all of the disallowance to individual farmers, but the Government made a policy decision to take the bulk of it on to the Exchequer, and I can explain why. Some money had already been collected from farmers. There is reference in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report to €950,000 in this regard. There was a subsequent amount of €3 million collected, which I can also explain. Of course, it is important to say that farmer payments were cut as a result of the LPIS review undertaken in 2013.