Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

Let me deal with the payments issue, because there is some confusion as to whether my Department is getting out the payments on time. Currently our payments to farmers are €45 million ahead of where we were at this time last year. There are no delays in sending out the single farm payments. Next week we will distribute €444 million of single farm payments to 85,000 farmers across the country. This is 50% of their single farm payment. By the end of next week we will be another €42 million ahead of where we were last year on top of where we currently are. There are no delays with the two big packages, the disadvantaged area and the single farm payments. There are some areas where farmers have not got their payments because of mapping problems and the need for clarification on certain points. Where there are genuine problems is with AEOS payments. The agri-environment options scheme is a complicated scheme that was introduced previously but it had a series of implications in terms of complexity of mapping, where maps had to be synchronised with maps that were submitted for single farm payment and in many cases they did not match up. The reason we are obsessed with digitising maps is that in future we will not have delays as a result of mapping. Having digitised maps allows one to make decisions much more quickly. There are teething problems with AEOS.

See this speech in context