Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Question 20: To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food his views on whether farmers in some areas will receive a lower single farm payment on foot of changes to mapping requirements; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16954/10]

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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By way of general comment, it is clearly evident that the Single Farm Payment, under which over €1.25 billion is paid annually to Irish farmers, is an extremely important Scheme not just to the agricultural industry, but also to the rural economy as a whole. With regard to the specific issue raised by the Deputy, I wish firstly to emphasise that no changes have been made with regard to the definition of eligible areas under the Single Farm Payment. Historically, the vast majority of Scheme applicants have been making sufficient deductions from their claims to take account of such areas in that they reduced the area claimed on. However, in many cases as no mapping evidence supporting these deductions was provided, the ineligible features were not, therefore, recorded onto the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), my Department's computer-based land parcel tracking system. As LPIS underpins all the direct payments, it is crucial that it accurately reflects the true position on the ground, particularly given the audit scrutiny which this Scheme attracts not just in Ireland but in all Member States.

Under the provisions of the governing EU Regulations, payments under the Single Farm Payment may be made only in respect of eligible land and applicants under the Scheme are obliged annually to declare the land parcels available to them; details of the eligible area of the land parcels are recorded on LPIS. Details of the use and area claimed for each of some one million parcels on the LPIS system are registered and continually monitored by my Department.

Each year in advance of the closing date for the Single Payment Scheme, my Department sends preprinted application forms (which include a list of parcels declared by the applicant in question the previous year) to each applicant. It is the responsibility of all applicants to ensure that the details in each year's application are accurate. As a further aid to farmers, my Department issued maps of all lands parcels in early 2010. Applicants were advised of the need to carefully review these maps and to make the appropriate deductions, if any, to the area of eligible parcels as necessary. For example, where a house or other building has been constructed, farmers are required to submit maps outlining the exclusion with their applications to allow accurate deductions to be made. It is also necessary for applicants to exclude ineligible features such as scrub, roadways, etc. Therefore, the LPIS database has to be amended on an ongoing basis to reflect any permanent changes such as parcel boundary changes, addition of new parcels, etc.

In order to meet the EU requirements, my Department initiated a process whereby the ortho-photos of land parcels declared by applicants were reviewed. If it was deemed that some of the area of the parcels reviewed was ineligible arising from, for example, house-sites, farmyards, ponds, trees and scrub, the ineligible areas were deducted from the claimed area and payments in respect of the period from 2005 were re-calculated. However, in the vast majority of cases, the applicants were making sufficient deductions for the ineligible features and, therefore, there were no over-payments in these cases.

As you are aware, these Schemes are fully and partially funded by the European Union and the relevant Competent Authorities in each Member State are obliged to ensure that the requirements of the governing EU Regulations are observed and that only valid applications that fully comply with the requirements are paid. The administration of these Schemes in each Member State is subjected to close scrutiny by officials of the EU Commission and the EU Court of Auditors to ensure that the regulatory requirements are met and that the Schemes are applied in a uniform manner across the European Union.