Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My colleague, Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, and many other Deputies raised the delays in GLAS payments in the House a few weeks ago. Huge fines, penalties and levies are imposed on people who cannot pay their taxes. It was not good enough for the Minister, Deputy Creed, to say in this week's Irish Farmers Journalthat these delays have been caused by technical hitches. He told Deputy Healy-Rae a few weeks ago that there was a computer glitch. It is not acceptable. Farmers are decent people who pay their bills. They like to pay the people they hire in to do work. Now those people cannot get paid. Farmers are embarrassed out of their minds because they need the grant money, to which they are entitled for environmental reasons, to pay the bills of people they have employed. They are in the invidious situation of waiting for money from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Computer glitches and technical hitches are no good to them. They want the money to which they are entitled. Everything was approved before they started. This is a nonsense. Revenue imposes penalties and penal rates of interest on people who fail to pay their taxes, but farmers and others who are waiting for money from the State cannot get anything. It is totally unacceptable.

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