Mr. Paul Savage:

Partnership cases are one of the categories of case that are proving difficult for the Department. We have had issues where there are serious complications that arise in terms of people coming together in partnerships because the Department, across a range of schemes, has to associate all of the different details that would have been associated with individuals up to that point. We have to bring them together under the partnership umbrella. Then we have to make sure we are giving adequate payments to people but not duplicating them and that we are making payments correctly. It is a complex exercise. Our systems have to be adapted in order to accommodate partnerships. We have had difficulties with those over the years in terms of trying to process them properly.

From an ACRES pint of view, and I think the Minister mentioned this when he was here previously, we took the approach we wanted to definitively fix those issues that needed to be fixed as far as changing ownerships in partnerships is concerned. We did not want to put out a short-term solution that would involve manual payments being processed for farmers and carrying forward problems into subsequent years. We wanted to make sure the system was working effectively, and that has delayed the payments.