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:

It is a criticism of both farmers and the Department. That is how I would put it. Obviously, farmers are the ones who declare the area they have that is eligible and they can see on the ground what is eligible. A farmer knows if he or she has built a house on a piece of land that it is no longer eligible so he or she should take it out of the calculation. We have a policing responsibility to try to find out if farmers make false declarations. We have used various techniques to do so, but key to it was the orthoimagery or, in other words-----