Ms Davena Lyons:

We moved to an online system in 2019. That is the Revenue online system or e-repayment system. Some 99% of claims come in through that system but we also facilitate a paper-based system for people who are not e-enabled. Insofar as submitting on the system goes, we ask that people complete the form online and submit supporting documentation, setting out the details and nature of the claim. Revenue has a risk-assessment process in place for claims. If a claim is not selected for risk assessment, the claimant will get the payment out of the door and in their bank account within five days. That is the length of time involved where the claim is not assessed for risk assessment. Sometimes a claim is selected for risk assessment. The benefit of a claimant submitting the documentation in advance when uploading the claim is that the team can often look at the claim without having direct contact and make the payment out the door. Sometimes interaction with the claimant is required and we need to contact the farmer for explanation.

We looked back at this in preparation for today. A significant amount of documentation is submitted in various forms and it is sometimes not easily readable.

Therefore, we need some clarification on what it is. Sometimes, we look at other risk assessments and we need some clarification in that regard. Overall, speaking generally, we have a processing time of two weeks. However, we have certain peaks in the year when we get more claims. Realistically, if someone came to us in January or February this year or before Christmas, there was a six-week backlog to get through the majority of the claims. We now have that waiting time down to approximately two weeks.