Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food

Delays in Departmental Scheme Payments: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

2:00 am

Mr. Paul Savage:

No, we do not publish reviews into how the internal systems are working, as such. What we are doing is fixing the problems as they emerge, and we do that on an ongoing basis. We have a plan of action to fix any IT issues, processing issues or administrative issues that we are having, and we do that on an ongoing basis. We do it through the really deep knowledge that people have of how the schemes operate and what the issues are within the systems that need to be addressed. To be honest, even an independent review from outside would really have to familiarise itself with the internal workings of the scheme, which would be difficult given the complexity of the scheme. We are adapting all of the time and making changes all of the time. We are changing the functionality and we have increased the frequency of payments over the last period.