Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North, Fine Gael)
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I thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for allowing me to raise this matter on the Adjournment. I congratulate Deputy Seán Connick on his elevation to the position of Minister of State. He will do an excellent job. This is his first challenge this evening as Minister of State.

Seán Connick (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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It is an easy enough one.

Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North, Fine Gael)
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For the past three or four weeks 400 REPS 3 and REPS 4 files are awaiting approval for payment by a district superintendent in the Tralee office for the north Kerry area. The average payment is €8,000 per file. Farmers need this money urgently just to keep going. Many are involved in dairy or beef farming or both. Income from these sectors has collapsed in the past year and most farmers are running their operations at a loss. Hence the importance of these REPS payments, which may be their only source of income for some time to come.

The acting district superintendent retired in 2009 and was not replaced. In November 2008, there were three permanent supervisory agricultural officers, SAOs, and permanent district superintendent based in the Tralee AES office processing and approving these payments. The district superintendent was transferred to Kildare. One SAO retired in November 2009 while the third SAO acted up as district superintendent until his retirement in December 2009. No replacement was appointed to fill these vacancies. One SAO now remains in the Tralee AES office, which is totally inadequate to service REPS for the farming community.

A similar situation exists in the AES office in Killarney where approximately 500 REPS 4 files await payment plus additional REPS 3 payment. The permanent district superintendent in Killarney was transferred to Cork on 5 January 2009 and was not replaced. Currently there is no district superintendent in County Kerry, an area that is heavily dependent on incomes from REPS.

The offer of REPS management for an SAO to upgrade to district superintendent for a number of weeks is not acceptable to the staff concerned. The offer should have been for a minimum of 12 months at least and have included the appointment of a replacement SAO to process the files for the same period if it was to be seriously considered. The current staffing situation in Kerry is a direct result of no effort having been made to fill vacant posts. It seems that Kerry has been ignored and neglected in this instance. The remaining staff are working under extreme pressure in dealing with the increased workload and the verbal complaints from irate and frustrated applicants who have not received payment to which they are entitled within the agreed protocol.

I call on the Minister of State to at least extend the offer of acting up to the current SAO in Tralee for 12 months. If he cannot do that, there is no reason his Department could not pay 75% of the outstanding moneys owed to the almost 1,000 farmers in County Kerry. At least that would carry them over for some period.

Seán Connick (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this matter with me and for kind words. I look forward to working with him.

Payments for the 2009 REPS 4 scheme commenced on 18 December 2009 and continue to issue on a weekly basis. To date, out of 28,842 farmers who are due payments, 19,951 have been paid in full. Claims continue to be processed and a further 1,000 payments or so will issue very shortly. Queries have arisen on the remaining cases.

To meet the requirements of EU regulations, applications for REPS payments have to go through an extensive series of administrative checks before payment can be released. In a significant number of cases, those checks raise issues and queries which require further detailed examination. Department staff are working to resolve these as quickly as possible. Many of these cases will, however, require the applicants' planners to amend the farm plans that were submitted originally. The persons concerned have been made aware of the position and the applications will be further processed without delay on receipt of amended plans.

There has been a vacancy at district superintendent level in the Tralee office since December, 2009. The district superintendent has a key role in the approval of claims for payment. Due to the need to further control public expenditure and the number of public sector employees, the Government decided in March 2009 to introduce a moratorium on recruitment and promotion in the public service. This moratorium forms a central plank in the Government's programme to control public expenditure. As a result of that moratorium my Department has been unable to fill the vacant district superintendent post in Tralee. The Department is endeavouring to put alternative arrangements in place to ensure the prompt processing of claims. A total of 804 applications under the REPS 4 scheme were received in the Tralee office and 411 of those have been fully paid. The balance are files that are under query or awaiting to be confirmed for payment and the Minister remains committed to ensuring that payments issue as quickly as possible.

The current delays in a number of cases should not in any way detract from the merits of REPS. The scheme has been one of the most successfully operated by the Department since its launch in 1994. It has delivered multiple benefits to the environment in terms of water quality, biodiversity, conservation and landscape enhancement. It has also brought welcome income benefits to farmers, with more than €342 million paid out to REPS participants last year and a total of more than €2 billion paid since 1994. In fact, payments in 2009 reached their highest level ever. The original allocation for last year was just €330 million but additional funds were provided in December last and approved by Dáil Éireann by way of a Supplementary Estimate. Payments due to REPS farmers this year will continue at this high level.

Notwithstanding the Government's decision to close REPS to new entrants in July last year, which was unavoidable given the state of the public finances, those farmers who are already in REPS will see out their five-year contracts. This means that there will still be farmers in REPS right up to the end of 2014. By the time the scheme finally comes to an end, payments to farmers will have exceeded €3 billion. The Minister is also planning to launch a new scheme - the agri-environment options scheme - in the very near future.