Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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9. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his plans to identify and rectify the persistent problems with the information technology system in his Department's Portlaoise office, which is leading to consistent delays in payment for farmers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28162/17]

Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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Like my colleagues, I congratulate the Minister of State and I wish will him in the continuation of his Ministry. He will do a good job. I served with him previously on the agriculture committee and he has good insight into the industry. What are his plans to identify and rectify the persistent problems with the information technology system in the Department's Portlaoise office, which is leading to consistent delays in payment for farmers?

Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy. We soldiered together ten years on the committee.

My Department has an excellent record in the delivery of high quality ICT systems.  In that respect, my Department is ahead of the rest of our European partners and are also highly regarded across the civil and public service.  We have been consistently among the first to make payments in the EU.

The basic payment scheme, BPS, which is operated from our Portlaoise office, was introduced in 2015, enabling Ireland to be among one of the first member states to make payments under the new CAP schemes. The online uptake for this scheme has increased steadily with more 109,000 applications submitted by this means in 2017. The BPS system has been improved on year on year to make it more farmer-farm adviser friendly.  A total of 99.7% of 2016 BPS applicants have been paid to date while 97.7% were paid on initial date of balancing payments, which is 1 December.

In the context of the Rural Development Programme 2015-2020, RDP, to which the Deputy referred specifically, the Department has delivered more than 20 new schemes that were supported by IT capability over the past two years.  In the first two years of the current RDP, my Department has implemented substantially more schemes than were implemented over the entire ten-year lifetime of the previous RDP programme.  To date Ireland has drawn down funding at a rate 2.4 times higher than the EU average. This rate of delivery and draw-down would not have been possible without the availability of complex IT software systems to support the business units in operating these schemes. Since 2014 my Department has adopted a policy of implementing fully digital end-to-end support for all but the smallest of schemes.

A number of different issues delayed GLAS payments, which I outlined earlier.

Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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There is a need for an immediate review of the current IT payment systems following the massive problems faced by farmers submitting applications for overdue payments under many rural development programme schemes. Enormous barriers are being experienced with the online system for GLAS, TAMS, the beef genomics programme and the knowledge transfer group scheme. The addition of a plethora of wholly bureaucratic schemes has added hugely to the costs of farmers and has led to a lengthy delay in the issuance of payments, for example, under the GLAS scheme. More complicated rules on farm schemes have led to an explosion in compliance costs and reduced the net financial benefit of many schemes to farmers. Under GLAS, it was agreed that up to 75% of payments would be commenced by the third week of October 2016 with the balance of payments in mid-December. At the beginning of May 2017, approximately 3,000 GLAS 1 and GLAS 2 applicants were still waiting on 85% of their 2016 payments, despite a farmer's charter of rights meeting where the Department made a commitment that all outstanding payments would be made by the end of April. Six weeks later, 94% of payments have been made, according to an update yesterday. The Department is still behind and I hope the charter will be adhered to in the future and farmers will be paid on time.

Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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This issue has been well-documented by the Deputy, his colleagues and others. Approximately 94% of applicants have been paid under GLAS. Documentation is awaited for 1,200 applications while another 1,400 are under review. The loading of information relating to the knowledge transfer scheme was not being accepted but that has been resolved and the deadline has been extended to 31 July. Of the 11,800 applications under TAMS, more than 3,300 payments have issued. A total of 1,394 claims were received with 898 payments issued. The online payment claims facility has been open since July 2016 and payments are issuing on an ongoing basis. TAMS II had a three-year window, which is delaying payments. It, however, gives applicants a window to claim. The payments, therefore, are not being drawn down as quickly as they might be if there was a one-year deadline for the completion of works.

Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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The Department's administration of some recent farm schemes was branded totally unacceptable by the IFA as recently as last month.

I understand the IFA requested meetings with the Minister to ensure the situation is taken under control as a matter of urgency. Will the Minister of State facilitate a meeting with the IFA? The IFA President Joe Healy has said the GLAS payments controversy, difficulties with TAMS payments and issues over the administration of the knowledge transfer scheme are evidence of serious problems within certain areas of the Department.

I began to chase up the TAMS issue in August 2016 with the agricultural liaison officer in the Minister's office. I then followed up with parliamentary questions in September and October. For four months the most up-to-date information I could get was a reply that stated that all applications received in each tranche have to be checked for administrative issues before they are then ranked and selected, and that this process was under way for the 2,000 applications received in tranche 3. A late payment might finally have gone through in early December, which would leave dairy farmers maybe six or weeks at best to complete the works applied for before the cows calve in January and they have to start milking. The barriers imposed on these farmers are completely out of order and there is a serious problem that needs to be rectified. It is a question of the timescale from when the applications are accepted. These farmers might have started milking in January and February with the spring calving, and they do not have time to get everything in order because of delays at departmental level.

Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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More than 20 schemes were rolled out in the last two years. There have been some teething problems but we do not anticipate these will arise again. The TAMS dairy schemes in particular were prioritised although one or two issues arose. In particular, changes were made to the criteria to allow people to proceed where planning permission may not have been secured but had been validated-----

Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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It was not always the fault of the farmer.

Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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It was very difficult. At one stage the farmer had to have the planning permission cleared 28 days after the grant of conditional planning. That changed because it was going to cause a delay of 12 weeks from the time somebody applied. Therefore, once planning permission was validated, applications were allowed to proceed on the basis that they were going to get permission. That was risky enough at times in that the approval might have been paid for but a building would be found to be not in compliance with the planning.

Efforts have been made. I accept there is more to be done but we can address that in the programmes that follow.