Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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801. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of farmers that inadvertently lost out on an ANC payment in the past five years as they did not tick the ANC box on their SPS application form; the number that appealed this to his Department; the number that appealed this to the agriculture appeals office; the percentage of each of the respective appeals which were successful; his plans to improve the application process in order that the ANC question is more readily apparent; if the SPS application form has been assessed in terms of plain English; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31503/20]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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In order to be eligible for the Areas of Natural Constraints (ANC) Scheme, farmers must apply for the scheme by completing the relevant section of the Basic Payment Scheme application form.  Farmers may choose not to apply for the ANC scheme in any given year for a number of reasons such as changes to their farming practice, loss of eligible ANC land through the ending of lease agreements or as a result of retiring from farming.

The application process is reviewed and refined annually to ensure that it is as clear and straight forward as possible.  In line with EU Regulations, all applications for the scheme are now completed using the Department’s online application system at www.agfood.ie.

When completing the Basic Payment Scheme online application, under a heading of “Other Schemes and Activities”, individuals are requested to tick a box to confirm if they wish to apply for the ANC scheme.

With regard to requests for reviews submitted to the Department, my Department does not maintain records which would readily identify the number of requests from applicants who failed to tick the ANC box.

The Agriculture Appeals Office has provided statistics concerning the total number of ANC appeals by year since the 1^stof January 2016. However, the records kept by Agriculture Appeals Office do not  provide a breakdown of the reasons why ANC cases are appealed and therefore it is not possible to identify how many of these cases involved a failure to tick the ANC box at application stage.