Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply, but it will not satisfy many farmers. Most farmers thought they had passed the test for 2008, 2009 and 2010, that the Department had double-checked their homework for those years and that if they adhered to what the Department had agreed in the digitisation and examination of the maps, following all the letters they had received in the last few years, that the maps were in order. Elderly farmers, in particular, thought they were in order because their homework had been passed. They then received a letter in July stating that they might have been overpaid from 2008 to 2010. No map accompanied the letter. I have a copy of the letter with me if the Minister wishes to see it. The letter did not say on what basis the overpayment was being calculated. Having written to the Department and eventually getting the maps, the Department wrote back to the farmers to say it was not the years 2008 to 2010 but the years 2009 to 2012. The Minister should bear in mind that in a case where one has a farm of 10 hectares, 0.3 of an error is the 3% limit of error one is allowed. It is not a huge amount of land. Is it legally possible for the State to carry this burden rather than the farmer?

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