Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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291. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if the €27 million deducted for the crisis reserve and not utilised will be reimbursed to farmers before Christmas 2014; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46299/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Payment of the balancing payment under the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) commenced yesterday. To date, over €550 million has issued to farmers. The total payments made to date to farmers under the 2 014 Single Farm Payment and Disadvantaged Areas Schemes now exceeds €1.3 billion. Payments under both Schemes continue to be made when individual applications become clear for payment. The EU Commission’s decision on the amount of the 2013 Financial Discipline deduction allocated to each Member State for re-imbursement to farmers was not made until 24 November 2014. At that stage, the arrangements for the payment of the SPS balancing were already in place. Given the level of payments to farmers, it would not have been appropriate to delay the issue of the balancing payments to incorporate the re-imbursement. My Department is now putting procedures in place to issue the €27.1 million Financial Discipline re-imbursement to farmers early in 2015.