Vol. 395 No. 7
10 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if his attention has been drawn to the fact that the Annual Report of the Court of Auditors of the European Community (details supplied) criticised Ireland for failing to provide, as required by Commission Regulation 295/88, information to the European Commission on national controls over EAGGF expenditure; and the steps he proposes to take to deal with this matter.
14 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if it is the case that Ireland failed to submit to the European Commission its annual declaration of EAGGF 1986 expenditure as required by 31 March 1987 or even before the extended deadline of 30 June 1987; and if his attention has been drawn to the fact that Ireland has been specifically criticised in the Annual Report of the Court of Auditors in this matter.
I propose to take Question Nos. 10 and 14 together.
The information on controls referred to in the Annual Report of the Court of Auditors of the European Communities for the financial year 1988 has since been forwarded to the Commission.
As regards the annual declaration, the annual report indicates that this country was one of five member states which were not in a position to meet the specified deadlines in respect of the 1986 accounts. Another member state, while respecting the deadline, sent in amending details 12 times, the latest being in June 1988.
The definitive annual declaration for 1986 was submitted by Ireland to the Commission in December 1987 and no subsequent amendments were made. The delay was due to the huge volume of sales in 1986 resulting from the Commission decision to reduce intervention stocks significantly in that year, which led to complex administrative processing before the definitive declaration could be finalised.
Can I take it that that file is now settled? With all the talk of intervention stocks, sales and values and so on, I assumed the Government would take this seriously when the Court of Auditors came back to them on a number of occasions to say that they had not done their homework properly. Have we overcome that problem now?
The indications are that the report which was submitted to the court of auditors has been accepted and I have no information to the contrary.
