Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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552. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the details of the information technology issues which he has indicated are partly responsible for the delay in over 9,000 farmers receiving their GLAS payments; the exact nature of these issues; the efforts his Department has made to resolve them; the reason they have not been resolved at this stage of the scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6049/17]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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In the context of the Rural Development Programme 2015 - 2020 the Department has delivered over twenty new schemes that were supported by IT capability in last two years.  In the first two years of the current RDP programme my Department has already implemented substantially more RDP schemes than were implemented over the entire ten year lifetime of the previous RDP programme. This rate of delivery would not have been possible without the availability of high quality complex IT software systems to support the business units in operating these schemes. Since 2014 my Department has adopted a policy of implementing fully digital end-to-end support for all but the smallest of schemes.

The 2016 GLAS payments underway since December 2016 represent the first full year payment schedule under the GLAS scheme.  More than 28,000 of the 37,500 participants in the scheme received 85% of their payment totalling almost €100 million before the end of last year. Further payments valued at €5.3m issued to just under 1,600 participants in the last two weeks and payments continue to be made on an on-going basis as cases are cleared. Every effort is being made in order to ensure that all outstanding payments are issued without delay.

I acknowledge that there have been a number of issues recently in particular in relation to the GLAS system.

Issues leading to delayed payments include the following:

- declaration of an incompatible parcel usage for the GLAS action chosen

- changes in parcel boundaries on which a GLAS action is chosen including splitting or merging of parcels

- an applicant is no longer claiming the parcel on BPS 2016

- incomplete documentation such as incorrect information on Low-Emission Slurry declaration

- incomplete interim commonage management plans

- incompatible data and parcel history on Department databases

The outstanding applications are currently being processed as a matter of urgency with a view to resolving issues as soon as possible.