Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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Question 40: To ask the Minister for Agriculture and Food the reason for the delay in issuing the single farm payment to farmers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [12045/06]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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One of my main objectives since assuming office as Minister for Agriculture and Food was to ensure the efficient implementation of the decoupled single payment scheme — the most significant change to agricultural support since our accession to the European Community.

This huge task was successfully implemented when over €1 billion in single payments issued to 118,500 farmers last December, meeting the target we had set ourselves of making the payments on the first possible date. This was a major undertaking and the outcome, after painstaking preparatory work in establishing individual entitlements, was, by any standards, a major achievement.

Under EU legislation, member states may commence payment under the single payment scheme on 1 December of the year of application, with payments being fully processed by the following 30 June. My priority in 2005, the first year of this new scheme, was to maximise the number of payments to eligible applicants by the earliest date possible of 1 December and I am satisfied that this was achieved. Since then, it has been my absolute priority to ensure that the issues that are holding up the remaining cases are resolved with the applicants concerned and that payments are made without undue delay. To this end, I have arranged that payments issue on a very regular basis, as soon as the problems with the outstanding cases are resolved.

In common with the coupled schemes, which the single payment scheme replaced, delays in processing can be caused by many factors, including incomplete application forms, errors on applications and discrepancies highlighted following computer validation, which must be resolved via correspondence with the applicant.

The ongoing objective of my Department is to make payments to all of those farmers who have yet to receive their payment or are entitled to a supplementary payment as soon as their cases are cleared for payment. Every effort is being made by my Department to resolve the outstanding cases but many of these are extremely complex and, in other cases, my Department is still awaiting documentation and applications for the transfer of entitlements before payment can be made. A number of payment runs continue to be made each week as the more complicated files are cleared.

I should add that the changeover to the single payment was undertaken while work continued on winding up the coupled schemes. The successful introduction of the single payment scheme in Ireland in 2005 is testimony to the efforts of all concerned. It is my intention that this success will be built on into the future. At present, total payments amount to €1,140 million involving 98% of farmers who hold entitlements and applied for the single payment scheme. Payments continue to issue to farmers as their applications are processed to completion in accordance with the EU legislation governing the single payment scheme.