Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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322. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the current and capital funding allocated to his Department; the underspend or overspend in 2015 to date, under each category, based on his Department's spending profile; the funding made available within and external to his Department's functions to support innovation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30118/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The current and capital funding allocated to my Department for 2015 and the variation from the January-June profile are set out below:

It should be noted that the profile of projected expenditure on a monthly basis is drawn up at the beginning of each year in order to anticipate the department’s funding requirements and financial management over the course of the year. There are many reasons why expenditure may vary such as the level and timing of payments under demand led schemes, the levels of disease incidences.

As regards funding to support innovation, my Department and its agencies (Teagasc, Marine Institute, Bord Bia, BIM) and other agencies that we work with such as Enterprise Ireland are involved in facilitating/encouraging all kinds of innovation in various ways. In addition, the Food Wise 2025 strategy recognises that innovation will continue to be a key driver of competitiveness and growth for the agri-food sector; and emphasises the need for a consumer-led focus for future investment in innovation, research and development.

My Department provides substantial funding to Teagasc each year (€123m in 2015) to aid Teagasc’s mission to support science - based innovation in the agri-food sector so as to underpin profitability, competitiveness and sustainability.  Knowledge transfer supports innovation by farmers in the management of their businesses and provides access to the technologies they can apply to improve their competitiveness.  The knowledge transfer advisory programme is delivered by Teagasc advisers in 12 Regional Advisory Areas throughout Ireland. These advisers are in contact with some 80,000 farmers.

Under the Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 my Department has allocated a budget of €4m over the 2014-2020 period for European Innovation Partnerships (EIP) for agricultural productivity and sustainability.

The new Beef Data and Genomics programme is another example of the innovation funded through the 2014-2020 RDP. The allocation for 2015 is €52m. This programme is a world first in terms of building a breeding index built on genomic evaluations in the beef sector and no other country in the world has done this on this scale.

As regards innovation in the marine domain both the Marine Institute and BIM are actively engaged with the sector at all levels in the promotion of innovative practices and the research upon which such practices are based. Total funding for BIM in 2015 is €19m while the MI 2015 budget is €26.6m.

My Department has awarded €100 million to a range of research performing organisations for collaborative research projects through our FIRM, Stimulus and CoFoRD competitive funding programmes over the last 4 years and the 2015 budgetary provision relating to this amounts to €14.6m. The new SHARP ‘strategic research and innovation agenda’ that was developed by a cross-funder Working Group of the Research Prioritisation process led by DAFM for the innovation agenda, especially in the technological domain.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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323. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if his Department or agencies under the authority of his Department have performed an assessment of the potential savings to be accrued if current paper-based application processes by members of the public were replaced with a fully online application system; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30133/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department makes extensive use of ICT to underpin all the functional areas of DAFM – both back-office and online.

My Department is heavily committed to the rollout of online systems both as a means of reducing internal costs and simplifying the application process for its customers and since Q4 2014, my Department has adopted the policy of providing for the application for all schemes online, except in a very small number of cases where the anticipated number of applications is so small as to make it uneconomical to develop and test the required functionality.

While no formal calculation of the savings has been undertaken, online application functionality provides benefits to both the Department and to its customers:

-It simplifies the applications process for the customer and gives instant acknowledgement of receipt of an applications

-It considerably reduces the amount of errors made and therefore increases the likelihood that the customer will get payments at the earliest opportunity.

-Information provided during the online process (such as spatial information) helps the customers choose the best options under a scheme

-It reduces or eliminates the work involved by DAFM staff in data capturing paper applications.

-The reduced error rate leads to a decrease in resources required to follow up on errors.

-It increases overall efficiency within the Department as all data is captured and stored in a central database.

Since November 2014, my Department has rolled out the online facilities for the following schemes:

-Basic Payments Scheme – Greening

-Basic Payments Scheme – 2015 Application

-Basic Payments Scheme – Trading

-Basic Payments Scheme – National reserve

-Basic Payments Scheme – Young farmer

-Basic Payments Scheme – Review of entitlements request

-GLAS – Green Low Carbon Agri-Environment Scheme – 2015 Application

-Organic Farmer Scheme

-Beef Genomics and Data  Programme

-Six (6) Knowledge Transfer Schemes

-TAMS – Young Farmers Investment Scheme

-TAMS  - Dairy Equipment Scheme

In addition, my Department will be rolling out an additional 4 TAMS schemes by the end of July.

My Department has been very proactive in the provision of online services to its customers (for example the number of online applications for single farm payment made online has increased from 30% in 2010 to 70% in 2015) and will continue to seek to improve the level of service provided when the opportunity arises.  My Department seeks to increase the level of uptake in online applications by way of press releases, advertisement campaigns and by sending text messages advising of availability and advantages of online applications.