Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Question 28: To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food the number of farmers that have not been paid any area aid or single farm premium so far this year on a county basis; the number of others that have received reduced payments because of unresolved mapping problems (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40534/10]

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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By the time the processing of the 2010 applications is completed, it is expected that my Department will have processed and digitised maps received from over 70,000 farmers. This compares with a figure of 30,000 for 2009 and an average of 22,000 maps in recent years. On average each farmer submitted two maps with their 2010 application forms.

Despite the huge additional workload significant progress has been made with the result that very few of the farmers who have yet to be paid have problems relating to the digitising of maps. In addition it has also been possible to make full or partial payments to those farmers whose only difficulty is non-digitised maps, with payment being made on those parcels of land that are digitised and cleared. This meant that thousands of farmers received payment much earlier than would normally have been the case. I also have implemented a provision, for the first time, where farmers not in receipt of their full advance payment can receive a supplementary advance payment following the re-digitising of their land parcels. In the past, such farmers would have to wait until 1 December before they could be paid their additional payment as well as their balancing payment.

There has some comment on the need to react earlier. This is easy to say but does not reflect the unprecedented number of maps requiring updating and re-digitising and extra two months required to input the huge level of additional information into the system. Data capture, which would normally take place by July, was only completed in September. In addition, the digitising of land parcels requires certain skills and knowledge and there are very few skilled operators. Therefore, it is not a situation where further staff could be readily recruited from outside. This year, all aspects of the processing of the Single Payment Scheme took longer than in previous years given the number of farmers who made alterations to their applications particularly relating to the changing of eligible areas.

The following tabular statements illustrate the payments to date under the Single Payment Scheme and Disadvantaged Areas Scheme.

2010 Single Payment Scheme

2010 Disadvantaged Areas Scheme