Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The position in relation to the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and Greening in 2015 is as follows. My Department has received some 126,000 applications under the 2015 BPS from applicants who currently hold entitlements. Under EU Regulations, all these applications are subject to robust administrative checks prior to payment. The work of my Department in this critical area must meet demanding EU and national audit requirements. Only valid applications under the BPS that fully comply with the requirements of the EU legislation are paid. 

It should be noted that Ireland is among the earliest to pay the BPS/Greening in the European Union and commenced payments on 16th October 2015. To date, 125,631 farmers have received payments totalling €1.144 billion. This covers over 99% of applicants.

There are very small numbers of applications that have yet to be processed for payment. As outstanding cases are processed and are cleared of any outstanding error, they will be sent for payment.   My Department is prioritising the processing of all such outstanding cases with regular payment runs continuing over the coming weeks for all fully processed cases.  When entitlements under the 2015 BPS scheme have been definitively allocated over the coming weeks, a final balancing payment will issue.

To date some 21,000 GLAS Tranche 1 (GLAS 1) farmers have received a first instalment of their 2015 part year payment in respect of payable actions for the period 1 October to 31 December, representing up to 85% of the total amount due for the 2015 part year. There are a number of applications remaining which have not passed all of the Department’s pre-payment validation checks for the 2015 part-year payment.  The Department is continuing to investigate these issues, including the correction of any IT or data issues, with a view to all these remaining cases meeting the payment validation checks so that they will be paid the full amount of their 2015 part-year payment when the 2015 GLAS balancing payment issues.