Batt O'Keeffe (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

Over the nine-year period, where the Department was aware of the ownership of land, all the people concerned were written to. In certain instances there might be a question over the ownership of certain parcels of land and to make contact with those people, all the other devices of making that information available were used — the media, public notices and maps in public places.

In addition, we used a process whereby we had access to all the land holdings known to the Department of Agriculture and Food. As a result, we were able to make contact with each of the owners of the parcels of land. Over that period 1,500 appeals were lodged by farmers, which seems to suggest they were very much aware of the opportunity to appeal within a three-month period. I can confirm that we will examine and honour all those appeals and we hope to have done that by year end.

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