Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

During December more than 14,000 claims came in. We were told by plenty of people in this House that work would not be done and claims would not be made. We stated very clearly that payments would be honoured. The suckler cow scheme is a new stream of income that was paid out for the first time during December. Some €33 million was paid out before the end of the year and another €12 million has already been paid during January——

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