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

I do not accept that there is a significant information technology issue in the Department. The outstanding payments go through a series of regulatory checks. The green low-carbon agri-environment scheme is complicated. Multiple actions have to be compatible with individual plots on farm holdings which, in turn, have to be referenced to the basic payment application of the farmer. There is a degree of checking to ensure eligibility with the basic payment application. Plot actions then come into it for individual plots and so on. The Department is waiting for information from certain people, including information on nutrient management plans, commonage management plans, rare breed actions and low emission slurry spreading. That is primarily what is sought by the Department. We suspect a cohort of applicants have disengaged from the process entirely and are no longer active. We are in the process of trying to communicate with them directly and through their advisers to see if they are still participating in the scheme or have, in fact, walked away from it. In some cases there has been no action or communication on the application for several years since the scheme was introduced in October 2015. We suspect some of them are in that category.

I do not have the figure for last Friday, although I suspect it is on the Department's website, but on the previous Friday we made in the region of 1,200 or 1,300 payments. We are clearing payments as quickly as we cross-check references. When a farmer submits all of his or her details of low emission slurry spreading or rare actions, we have to cross-check all of them with the plots. We are clearing them as quickly as we can. There is no comparable problem to the problem this time last year with GLAS.

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