Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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It is an accounting process. The EU, until it signs off on the various schemes, retains 5%. In closing out the 2007 to 2013 scheme, the refund was expected in 2017 but it came during the last days of 2016. To take the example of a scheme like REPS, we would have paid out the funding under that scheme. The EU would have withheld 5% and once the EU had gone through its processes, it would have refunded us for funding what we had paid out already to individual applicants. That is the same across all of the various schemes so the figure is cumulative.