Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

The first stage payment of 75% for 2009 is on the way to another 666 applicants who will receive payment in the next few days.

The other cases are still under query. To meet the requirements of EU regulations, applications for REPS payments have to go through an exhaustive series of administrative checks before payment can be released. In a significant number of cases, those checks raised issues and queries which required further detailed examination. Departmental staff are working to resolve these as quickly as possible.

Many of these cases require the applicants' planners to amend the farm plans that were submitted originally. Where this is the case, the applicants concerned have been made aware of the position and the applications will be further processed without delay on receipt of amended plans.

The House will be aware from previous debates that there were also delays in processing payments in a small number of local offices due to staff shortages. This has arisen from the Government decision in March 2009 to introduce a moratorium on recruitment and promotion in the public service to control public expenditure and numbers in public sector. This moratorium forms a key element in the Government's policy to control public expenditure.

As a result, my Department has been unable to fill several vacancies. I am endeavouring to put alternative arrangements in place to ensure the prompt processing of claims.

I hope the current delays in some REPS cases will not detract from the overall merit of REPS. The scheme has been one of the most successful operated by the Department since its launch in 1994. It has delivered multiple benefits to the environment with water quality, biodiversity, conservation and landscape enhancement. It has also brought welcome income benefits to farmers, with more than €342 million paid out to REPS participants last year and a total of more than €2 billion paid since 1994. Payments in 2009 reached their highest level ever. The original allocation for last year was just €330 million but additional funds were provided in December last and approved by the Dáil by way of a Supplementary Estimate. Payments due to REPS farmers this year will continue at this high level.

Notwithstanding the Government's decision to close REPS to new entrants in July last year, which was unavoidable given the state of the public finances, the contracts to those farmers in the scheme will be honoured in full. This means there will still be farmers in REPS right up to the end of 2014. By the time the scheme finally comes to an end, payments to farmers will have exceeded €3 billion.

Yesterday, I launched a new agri-environment options scheme, partly funded by the EU but which will also get substantial support from the Exchequer. The Minister for Finance has agreed to provide for payment to approximately 10,000 participants at a maximum of €5,000 a year.

The new scheme focuses on the priority areas of biodiversity, water management and climate change. The shape of the new scheme reflects the increasing emphasis at EU level of having schemes that deliver clearly identifiable and measurable benefits to the environment.

It consists of a menu of actions from which farmers can select those that complement the environmental profiles of their farms. The majority of participants will be able to reach the maximum payment of €5,000 while many others will get very close to that figure.

I thank the Deputies for bringing to my attention the understandable frustration experienced by some REPS applicants.

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