Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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235. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to set out in tabular form the amount expended by his Department on information technology infrastructure by hardware and software in each of the years 2014 to 2017 relating to scheme payment systems; and the budget allocation for 2018. [5152/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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This Department makes extensive use of ICT systems and services to underpin all of its core activities; including areas such as animal health and welfare, food safety, fisheries and scheme payments.

Since 2015 the Department has introduced over 20 new Common Agriculture Policy Schemes and the vast bulk of these are now processed end to end by these digital systems. This transformative project has been achieved using the mix of internal staff and external support. The Department now has in place the necessary systems to ensure that it can deliver on its commitments over the coming years.

Ireland is to the fore in Europe in its delivery of Agriculture related systems to support payment of our varied schemes. This is evidenced by our ability to draw down CAP Pillar 2 funding at a rate that is 2nd only to Finland and this is facilitated by having the necessary ICT systems and supports in place. In addition we are consistently delivering EU schemes and payments in a more efficient manner than our EU paying agency peers.

The following Table 1 details the amount of expenditure incurred in the years 2014-2017 (2018 projected)  in relation to ICT systems and hardware to support the varying scheme payments (including but not limited to BPS, ANC, BGDP, TAMS, Sheep Welfare, GLAS, Forestry and Knowledge Transfer).

The increase in expenditure in 2018 includes the initiation of a new Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) Rebuild project. This project will be delivered in two years and plans to implement a new state of the art LPIS, using up-to-date technologies and providing for increased accuracy.

Table 1