Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This year is the first full run of GLAS payments and there are problems which were not foreseeable in respect of the complexity and challenges posed to the IT system. It is not a question of resources from either an IT or staffing perspective, it is simply the volume and complexity of applications and having to walk through each application individually across parcels of land and up to 30 different options. When one is explaining, one is losing. I appreciate that. For farmers who have not been paid yet, it is cold comfort.

As this is the last year of AEOS, there is an obligation to sign off on the full period of the scheme. That is why there is a more onerous duty on us in respect of the final payments on AEOS. Equally, we are working through that obligation.

Deputy McConalogue has raised his point before about our commitments under the rural development programme generally and specifically in respect of the funding under this scheme. We will spend every penny of that funding and pay out. I suspect it will be like this year's basic payment scheme. Once we got through the teething problems associated with the first run of that last year, most people accepted that the initial payments ran through much more efficiently last October. I hope that what we are seeing now with GLAS I and GLAS II will not be replicated in future.

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