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, I do not think it is, to be honest. By the way, for the 2015 payments which are referenced in the report, we did have to put a manual system in place for the final quarter of 2015. There is a system up and running and it is the IT system that is identifying that there are issues with some of the payments, but one cannot automate everything. There are some things a human being has to look at to see what is the issue. The computer will say there is something amiss but a person must engage with it, look at it and examine it. Some of the cases are quite complex. In many cases the farmer may need to send us something or something has changed and the computer has identified that and we need to be satisfied that the change is okay. It may be a slight change in the land parcel area or it might be, for example, that a partnership has been established since the GLAS plan was submitted, and that affects things, or they are flagged in the system. We have to work our way through those things. Many people have been paid and we are working through the remainder as fast as we can.