Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)
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1634. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his views on the significant problems that arose with his Department's information technology systems which caused delays in payments in rural development schemes such as GLAS; if he can now reassure persons that all these problems have been rectified in order that there will be no recurrence in respect of the applications for schemes in late 2017 and 2018; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27669/17]

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.   To date Ireland has drawn down funding at a rate that is 2.4 times higher than the EU average. This rate of delivery and draw-down 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.

My Department has an excellent record in the delivery high quality ICT systems.  In that respect my Department is ahead of the rest of our European partners and is also highly regarded across the Civil and Public Service.  We have been consistently among the first to make payments in the EU.

A number of issues arose in relation to the GLAS system and, as I advised previously, I regret the difficulties that this may have caused to a number of farmers.  All but a very small amount of outstanding work has been completed and plans are in place to address this over the coming period.