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:
It was a range of things. As I said earlier, in some cases there were discrepancies between ACRES data we had on our system and this data, for instance. In some cases we had a major block, which the Minister referred to recently, in terms of rotational actions that are being deployed in the context of ACRES, which we had to resolve with an IT fix. We had a range of other categories where the data was not reconciling between ACRES and BISS. We were working through those categories on a systematic basis over the past number of months. That has enabled us to bring the 14,500 that was outstanding in January down to the 1,600 as it is now. We will continue to work through them. As I mentioned earlier, the change of ownership cases will form a large part of that remaining block. When we get those fixed over the next few weeks, those payments will go out to farmers. It is a case of continuing to chip away at all of those categories of issues we have had and we will get to the end of it over the next number of weeks. Hopefully we can continue with the rate of progress we have had over the past couple of months.