Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I know form-filling and all the rest is a constant source of frustration. I will put on the record of the House, as I have done previously, that I am a farmer. I come from a farming background. My wife and I still have an active farm in south Kildare. It is frustrating that this is happening.

Maybe I came come into this role of Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with a farmer's view of red tape and bureaucracy. When we look at the amount of EU funding we are receiving, however, we have to be able as a country to account for that, as do other countries across Europe. If we are found in audits by the EU not to have administered it appropriately according to the schemes, we can be subject to very significant disallowances and fines. I have come to understand very quickly that there is a significant need here. Therefore, we do not look to develop or make things any more complex than they need to be. There is a requirement that we must stand over the administering of the EU money, however, which is significantly important to our farmers and to the rural communities in which they are based.

As Minister of State with responsibility for farm safety, I get the stresses and strains on farmers at this particular time of year. It is a very busy time on farms with all the different activity from calving to lambing. This is also true for the tillage sector with the price of inputs, the weather and all those different concerns like whether the fodder will last before farmers get out onto the grass and how early they can get that grass. Mixed in with all that is the paperwork and that causes a lot of stress and strain. Much of this paperwork is necessary across our daily lives, however. We try to keep the level of work to a minimum so as not to burden farmers. As I outlined, however, necessary paperwork is a requirement of many of the schemes and programmes.

One of the key performance indicators of my Department's information management and technology, IMT, statement of strategy is the number of services offered digitally, such as form-filling. These digital services will inter aliahave pre-filled customer details as a default for all new digital forms. They will, therefore, recognise that the farmer has been there before. That will take away the need to ask farmers for the same information many times over. There is much streamlining in our online systems as well.

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