Vol. 467 No. 6
18 Miss de Valera asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry the steps, if any, he plans to take to remedy the situation as stated in the annual report of the Ombudsman for 1995 that complaints against his Department rose, as a percentage of complaints against all Government Departments, from 15 per cent to 20 per cent over the previous year. [13794/96]
33 Mr. H. Byrne asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry if his attention has been drawn to the annual report of the Ombudsman for 1995 and the references therein to his Department. [13793/96]
52 Mr. Doherty asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry the implications, if any, for the Farmers' Charter of the contents of the annual report of the Ombudsman in view of the rise in complaints against his Department. [13795/96]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 18, 33 and 52 together.
About three-quarters of all the cases relating to my Department and dealt with by the Ombudsman arise in the area of headage and other livestock grants. In his report for 1995 the Ombudsman lists 203 cases completed for my Department (of which 154 cases were in the headage and other livestock grants areas). Taken against the back-ground of the number of applications for these schemes which have arisen from about 280,000 in 1990 to 593,000 in 1995 the number of cases dealt with by the Ombudsman represents only a tiny fraction of the total number of cases (about 1 in 4,000 in the headage and livestock grants area). Indeed when account is taken of the fact that 110 of these 203 cases were either not upheld, discontinued or withdrawn the number of cases which were resolved or in which assistance was provided is only 93 (or about 1 in 6,000 of the headage and livestock grants applications).
