Martin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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Over the past number of weeks all of us have been lobbied by farming organisations and individual farmers regarding outstanding payments in respect of GLAS, the AEOS, organic farming schemes, the knowledge transfer programme and TAMS. The figures in the Irish Farmers' Journalthis week show that 2,729 farmers are owed approximately €3,500 in GLAS payments on average. In the AEOS schemes, 1,166 farmers are owed approximately €3,141 on average. In the organic farming scheme, 326 farmers are owed between €6,000 and €8,000 on average.

I understand 4,222 farmers are now waiting for payments under those three schemes. Many have spent thousands of euro to meet the requirements of the schemes. They have planted hedges and sowed crops to achieve environmental targets set down and to adhere to various scheme rules. The situation is causing serious cash flow difficulties to the farmers concerned.

The Minister of State has to accept that those in receipt of GLAS, AEOS and organic farm payments are at the low end of the income scale of farming in general. The payments are paramount for their survival.

On top of that, many farmers borrowed heavily on the understanding that they had been approved for TAMS. In some case they have borrowed €30,000, €40,000, €50,000 or €60,000. They are awaiting payments. Reasons as to why payments have not been forthcoming have been put down to computer chaos and IT worries within the Department. This is unacceptable. As I said, farmers who have invested in schemes , including TAMS, have done so in good faith. They have lived up to their responsibilities within the various schemes. Their survival depends on their being paid speedily.

I do not think any other sector, such as teachers, gardaí or those in the trade union movement, would accept being treated like that. The excuse the Department is hiding behind, that is, IT or computer chaos, is not acceptable. Investment in the IT sector has changed the focus of the basic payment scheme and has been a fantastic success.

When will farmers be paid? Will the 4,222 affected by the three schemes I mentioned be paid? I do not have figures for TAMS, but I understand a substantial number of people have payments outstanding. When will they get their payments?

I am quite sure that backbenchers will insist that these payments are long overdue. People who borrowed money in order to live up to their requirements find themselves paying interest of perhaps 9% for personal loans for a considerable number of months with no certainty regarding their payments. Can the Minister of State enlighten us in that regard? I ask him to give solace to people who are waiting for payments.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Ferris for raising this issue. I understood he wanted to discuss TAMS, but I will try to cover other matters as best I can. I will set out the current position regarding the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS II. During 2015, a suite of six measures were announced under TAMS II. These measures were launched under the new rural development programme 2014-20 and are co-funded under the European agricultural fund for rural development.

The measures provide grants for capital investment in physical assets and there are six headings, which the Deputy will know. Among the objectives of the scheme are to enable growth in competitiveness in the sector, address environmental and climate change issues, support increased efficiency in holdings and improve animal health and welfare. In addition to these objectives, the young farmers capital investment scheme aims to address one of the key structural issues in the sector by specifically targeting support at young trained farmers by offering them a greater rate of aid intensity, that is, 60% of grant aid compared to a standard rate of 40%.

In March this year, an additional measure, the tillage capital investment scheme, was launched. One of the objectives of this scheme was to facilitate the tillage sector to develop a targeted and precise approach, focusing on environmental dividends, efficiency and growth.

Specific areas of investment under the tillage measure include minimum disturbance tillage equipment, sprayers, rain water harvesting, grain storage and grain dryers. As with all measures, applications must be made online, either by the farmer or an adviser authorised to act on his or her behalf. TAMS II is opened in rolling three month tranches. The next closing date for applications under the first tranche of the tillage measure and the seventh tranche of the other measures is 30 June 2017. The financial allocation for TAMS II for the full rural development plan period is €395 million. To facilitate the drawdown of EU funding, we have provided increased budget certainty to ensure that all farmers can avail of funding over the entire period of the scheme.

This scheme has proved popular with Irish farmers and over 11,700 applications have been submitted to date. Of these, 8,350, or more than 70%, have been approved. Approvals are issuing on an ongoing basis with approvals under the most recent tranche due to commence shortly. The figures are much lower when it comes to payment claims. It is open to approved applicants to submit an online payment claim as soon as they are in a position to do so. The timing of the submission of a payment claim before the approved deadline is entirely a matter for the individual farmer. To date, only 1,368 payment claims have been submitted. The Department has actively encouraged approved applicants to submit payment claims including by contacting approved applicants individually by text message. A small number of claims have not yet been paid as the IT functionality to reduce over-claims is currently being developed. To date, payments amounting to over €10 million have issued in 847 cases. All payment claims submitted are being examined on an ongoing basis. Where an issue arises with a payment claim, the applicant concerned is contacted directly by the Department to resolve it.

In relation to GLAS, the 2016 payments represented the first full-year payments under the scheme. To be very clear, only GLAS tranche 1 and tranche 2 participants are eligible for a payment in respect of 2016. At the end of December 2016, there were approximately 37,500 active tranche 1 and 2 participants in GLAS, of whom 27,400, or over 70%, received 85% of the 2016 payment in December. These payments were valued at over €97 million. GLAS has a range of over 30 actions available for selection by applicants under the different regulations. Given their complexity, many issues require review on a case-by-case basis. This work is ongoing in the remaining 2,700 cases. Where issues remain, my Department, or rather the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine - I would not like to assume I am getting a different job - has been in direct contact with participants or their advisors and is making every effort to resolve outstanding issues on a case-by-case basis. Additional information or outstanding documentation has been requested and is awaited in over 1,000 of these cases. In this regard, I urge participating farmers to return outstanding documentation, such as an interim commonage management plan or annual low-emissions slurry spreading declaration, so that the Department can moves things on.

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Michael Creed, wants these issues dealt with as do his officials. They will do all in their power to get people their payments as quickly as possible.

Martin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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I find it difficult to understand how this has arisen when there was a huge number of claims at the start which the computers and officials were able to process. There is now roughly 4,222 claims across the knowledge transfer, organic farmer, AEOS and GLAS schemes, which seems a very small number. If it is possible to process tens of thousands of claims in a period and only 4,000 or so are left, I cannot understand how things are now so slow and the Department is not able to deal with them. In my county alone, approximately 150 GLAS payments remain outstanding. It was 189 two weeks ago. As such, 39 payments have been made in two weeks.

A person I am currently dealing with regarding TAMS II was given the go-ahead in early August 2016 over the phone on the back of which he borrowed money from the bank to buy equipment. Now, he will not be paid because the Department says he made those payments prior to getting written approval. It is not acceptable that somebody who has borrowed a great deal of money finds himself in a situation where he will have to appeal to get this sorted out.

It may be stretching things a bit, but I want to raise the issue of grain farmers and the result of a Private Members' motion here. Their losses last year would have been sorted out with €4 million. I ask the Minister of State, Deputy English, to use his influence with the Minister, or to act if he is the new Minister, to ensure that the grain farmers who were decimated last year get some support. It is a very small amount of money. The Minister has made a commitment to increase the ANC payments by €25 million in the 2018 budget. I hope Deputy English will be the Minister. I see him nodding his head as if he is going to meet all those commitment. I hope he will live up to all that when he becomes the Minister, if he does.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I am sure Deputy Creed expects to be Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine for a very long time and my understanding from farmers is that they want to keep him as Minister for a long time. While there might be a new Taoiseach, I am sure Deputy Creed will still be there and taking questions here. Again, I expressed his apologies at the outset that he could not take the debate here himself.

The online payment claims system has been open since July 2016 but to date a low number of payment claims have been submitted as compared with the number of approvals requested. Of the 1,368 payment claims submitted to date, 847 have been paid. Payments are issuing on an ongoing basis. Payments in the amount of more than €10 million have been made. The current outstanding payment claims, of which there are 521, generally fall into the following four categories, with the estimates percentages as well. Some 75% of claims are clean cases. These are cases where the claims application is fully in order and being worked on and should issue soon. Claims where there is an obvious error on the application form which the regional inspector is examining on an ongoing basis with payments then issuing represent 10% of cases. A further 10% of cases involve an issue with the claim which will lead to a reduction in payment but no incurred penalty. The IT functionality to process these claims is expected to be operational in early June. Approximately 5% of cases are those where there was an issue with the claim which will lead to both a penalty and a reduced payment. The IT functionality to process these claims is expected to be operational in July.

Delivery of the full IT functionality to allow for the processing of payment claims where a penalty is to be applied is being developed. Issues with individual payment claims are being resolved on an individual basis through direct contact by the Department with the farmer concerned or his or her advisor. I do not have the county-by-county breakdown but I trust the figures Deputy Ferris has for Kerry are correct. I cannot confirm them. The Minister is determined that this issue will be resolved where the cases are straightforward. In this case, 75% of claims are clean and straightforward and he hopes to progress them as quickly as he possibly can. The Department will work hard to make that happen.