Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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482. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine further to Parliamentary Question No. 577 of 18 October 2016, when a reply will issue; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35722/16]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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As clarified by the Deputy the information requested was to provide in tabular form on a county basis, the total number of farmers that were given land eligibility penalties under the basic payment scheme and single farm payments in 2014, 2015 and to date in 2016; the total monetary amount of such penalties.  In that regard please see the following table outlining the information requested. 

As can be seen from the table the number of farmers penalised has fallen considerably year on year.  New measures were announced in 2016 by way of a Preliminary Check and Revised Penalty Regime which are intended to further assist in the reduction of penalties for farmers.

The preliminary check, which is exclusive to applicants who submit their application using the departments online system,  notifies applicants of an overclaim/dualclaim or overlap error on their application and allows them a window of up to 35 days in which to rectify this error without penalty.  In 2016 over 5,000 notifications issued under the Preliminary check system.

A revised penalty regime was also introduced in 2016 which reduced the penalty imposed where an overclaim of between 3 and 20% occurred from twice the difference of the area overclaimed to 1.5 times the difference now where the overclaim exceeds 3% or 2 hectares. Furthermore where the area overdeclared is over 3% and not greater than 10% the penalty is further reduced to .75 times the difference where it's the first time the herdowner has been penalised under the new rule.  These measures it is expected, will contribute to the reduction of errors and the penalties applied.