Vol. 422 No. 5
41 Mr. Durkan asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if he will outline the number of outstanding beef and cow premia payable as at 30 June 1992; if he has any proposals to discharge them; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
55 Mr. Doyle asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if he will outline the number of beef premium applications for 1991 which have been disqualified; and if he will give a breakdown of the figures on a county by county basis.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 41 and 55 together.
The position at present is that 91,960 applicants under the 1991 EC Special Beef Premium Scheme and 81,806 applicants under the EC Suckler Cow Premium Scheme have been paid their grants. These figures compare with 88,168 and 80,088 payments under the 1990 Beef Premium and Suckler Cow Premium Schemes respectively. It is estimated that a further 2,000 applicants for special beef premium who applied in December, 1991 will be paid in the coming weeks bringing the total number of payments under this Scheme to 94,000 — some 6,000 more than under the 1990 scheme.
The increase in the number of applicants receiving payment under the Special Beef Premium Scheme while in part attributable to a greater number of applications submitted in 1991 was greatly facilitated by the new arrangements for dealing with problem cases involving genuine accidental error which I put in place earlier in the year.
As a number of the Special Beef Premium applications are still the subject of query it is not possible at this stage to give figures for disqualifications. All but about 1,100 applicants for the 1991 Suckler Cow Premium have been paid to date.
