Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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Obviously I set an ambitious target here. We changed the structures inside it and I gave extra supports to my officials in Wexford to try to get through this and get farmers paid as quickly as possible. When I came into this job on 23 January, we had 14,500 farmers unpaid historically. That was not acceptable to me. With 1,700 of them cleared last week, we now have it down to 2,961 outstanding from 2024 and of them, 790 are from 2023. I expect to make considerable progress both this week and next week again to continue to drive down those numbers. I am keeping the foot to the floor as best I can to keep as much pressure on to get every farmer sorted as quickly as possible. My intention is still to aim for the end of June and to try to keep that pressure on as much as possible. Not every single case can be resolved-----