Vol. 492 No. 7
162 Mr. U. Burke asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the reason a person (details supplied) in County Galway has not been paid his farm retirement pension allowance from the date of application in view of the fact that further consideration of his application was delayed within his Department and was outside the control of the applicant; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15014/98]
The application in this case was lodged in the local Farm Development Services Office on 25 October 1996. However, the application could not be processed as the documentation was incomplete. Full documentation was lodged on 12 November 1997.
I have made arrangements to ensure that where undue delays occur in processing applications for the farm retirement pension they do not result in the applicant being unfairly penalised. Accordingly, pension commencement dates are adjusted to take account of any such processing delays. These procedures were used in this case and the date from which payment commenced was set as 25 August 1997.
