Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy McConalogue for his questions. With regard to the underspend, it is important to put it in the context of the Department's overall budget of €2.5 billion. The underspend is less than 2%.

In the context of trying to manage departmental expenditure of this scale, it is quite a fine act to bring in the expenditure as close as that. The fact that 70% of the Department's expenditure is concentrated in the last quarter of the year makes the management of that expenditure quite a challenge.

The issue of GLAS payments has been mentioned. I am advised that our systems will be fit for purpose when we hit the "pay" button later this week. Obviously, certain issues are outside the control of the Department. Last year's issues are well documented. We are hoping against hope that all of the thousands of outstanding nutrient management plans will come in to enable us to pay all farmers for whom that is the issue. A completed commonage management plan is no longer required. My understanding is that as long as the adviser has commenced the uploading of the plan, and this is registered with the Department's online system, that should be sufficient to clear the way for payment. The advice we received during our engagement with planners was that they started the process of compiling commonage management plans a considerable time ago. All that remains is for them to engage with the Department's online system to upload those plans. When we have received evidence of such engagement, the commonage management plans will not be an impediment to the releasing of payments. We are on target to pay the maximum possible number of people the 85% advance on the basis that the planners have started commencing the nutrient management and commonage management plans. Approximately 3,300 nutrient management plans are still outstanding. They are coming in at a good rate. We will hit the "pay" button this week. We will do another payment next week. As they come in, we will be able to approve them for payment. The additional funding for Bord Bia is a once-off payment.

The sheep welfare scheme is designed and approved by the Commission on the basis of costs incurred and income foregone. I appreciate the difficulties that are being experienced in the hill sheep sector. If we wanted to top up the payment, we would need to have incurred an expenditure of an equivalent amount to the top-up amount. This would involve going back to the Commission. If one looks at the simple mathematics of it, one will see that it involved €10 for 2.5 million ewes. We did not get 2.5 million ewes. We will open the scheme again if more people want to participate in it. It is not open to us to make the payment for which the Deputy is calling.

There is not much I can add in respect of the fodder issue. I think it is appropriate to ask. If we did this in reverse - if we committed public funds without the appropriate input - we would be rightly questioned about that in the Oireachtas and by other public expenditure watchdogs. We have to make sure everything we do is based on an analysis of the situation. That is what Teagasc is currently doing.

I am aware that burnt land is an issue. I understand that a couple of hundred farmers, or maybe fewer, are involved. Deputies will recall that in the first half of this year, an outcry followed the media coverage of hill burning that was taking place outside the timelines for burning. I suppose this is a follow-through on it. The Department deals with these files on a case-by-case basis. It assesses the evidence available to it in each case. Landowners are entitled to exhaust an appeals process. Nobody wants to see a bona fide victim of unauthorised burning by somebody else having his or her basic payment reduced for that reason. Equally, we do not want to see a wanton disregard for the terms and conditions of the scheme. The number of people affected has been distilled down from a far larger number of land owners to a relatively small cohort of people who are entitled to and should avail of the appeals process that is open to them. I hope we reach a point where everybody gets a fair hearing in respect of what has happened on his or her individual holdings. The Department's eligible land is also subject to audit by EU auditors in respect of this issue. We have to be able to stand over our systems so that we do not end up costing the State money as a consequence of non-compliance with land eligibility issues. It is a question of trying to find an appropriate balance. The scale of these problems is relatively small. Obviously, it is a blow for any individual farmer to receive a letter like this. At the time, these fires attracted considerable adverse publicity because they were significantly outside the time permitted for burning and were of a scale that led to many difficulties. The Department was obliged to respond. Farmers should exhaust the process that exists in order to ascertain what the outcome will be at the end of the day.