Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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195. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will provide a breakdown per county of the total number of farmers that are awaiting payments under the disadvantaged area scheme; the reasons for the delay in administering payments; the expected date that the payments will issue; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19685/13]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Payments under the 2012 Disadvantaged Areas Scheme commenced, on target, on 26 September 2012 and, to date, payments worth in excess of €207 million have issued to 94,529 of the total of 102,083 who applied. Details are given in the Annex. However, as demonstrated below, no undue delay currently exists in processing cases and payments continue to issue twice weekly, as individual cases are confirmed eligible.

A major factor impacting on processing of 2012 Scheme applications arose from the changes made to better focus the Scheme in light of budgetary realities and, in particular, ensuring that affected applicants could have access to robust and fair derogation and appeal processes. In this context, my Department wrote to in excess of 10,000 beneficiaries under the 2011 Disadvantaged Areas Scheme whose holdings had not achieved the minimum stocking density of 0.3 livestock units per forage hectare, as required under the Terms and Conditions of the 2012 Scheme.

In response, my Department received a total of 9,829 derogation applications of which 7,385 were successful. Those, whose applications were unsuccessful, were informed of their right of appeal to the independently chaired DAS Appeals Committee, on foot of which 1,572 appeals were received. On the basis of additional information which had not previously been submitted, my Department was in a position to overturn the original decision on 612 cases, without the need to refer the cases to the DAS Appeals Committee.

Of the appeals submitted to the Committee, decisions have been taken in respect of 844 cases, of which 302 were allowed, 458 disallowed and 84 requested to submit additional information. Processing of the outstanding appeals remains ongoing.

On a more general note, the overall position is that those who have not received payment under the 2012 Disadvantaged Areas Scheme (i.e. 7,554 cases – see table) are not yet confirmed eligible for payment. Of the 7,554 cases in question, 3,556 have not, as yet, shown that their holdings satisfied the Scheme minimum stocking density requirements. The holdings of a further 2,822 did not achieve the minimum stocking density of 0.3 livestock units in 2011; 444 cases relate to applicants being deceased or change of ownership where my Department must await legal formalities to be completed. A further 47 cases relate to cases where it has not been demonstrated that equines are eligible. The remaining 685 cases in the main relate to outstanding area-related issues.

2012 Disadvantaged Areas Scheme