Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 3 July 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Agricultural Schemes: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

5:30 pm

Mr. Paul Savage:

No, there is not. That was mentioned earlier. The complexity of the scheme is quite considerable, especially when one comes to the co-operation project areas and payments are calculated on the basis of results. We really must have all of the data processed correctly by our computer system in order to generate an accurate payment. If we were to try to do it manually, we would end up having to go back over it from an IT perspective later on. There would also probably be increased potential for error if we were to try to pull out information to do it manually. Given that such a wide variety of information has to be drawn together to calculate those payments, it would involved an inordinate effort.