Grant Payments

Thursday, 4 November 2010

Questions (28)

Seymour Crawford

Question:

28 Deputy Seymour Crawford asked the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food the number of farmers who have not been paid any area aid or single farm premium so far this year on a county basis; the number of others who have received reduced payments because of unresolved mapping problems (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40534/10]

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Written answers

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Deputy Brendan Smith)

By the time the processing of the 2010 applications is completed, it is expected that my Department will have processed and digitised maps received from over 70,000 farmers. This compares with a figure of 30,000 for 2009 and an average of 22,000 maps in recent years. On average each farmer submitted two maps with their 2010 application forms.

Despite the huge additional workload significant progress has been made with the result that very few of the farmers who have yet to be paid have problems relating to the digitising of maps. In addition it has also been possible to make full or partial payments to those farmers whose only difficulty is non-digitised maps, with payment being made on those parcels of land that are digitised and cleared. This meant that thousands of farmers received payment much earlier than would normally have been the case. I also have implemented a provision, for the first time, where farmers not in receipt of their full advance payment can receive a supplementary advance payment following the re-digitising of their land parcels. In the past, such farmers would have to wait until 1 December before they could be paid their additional payment as well as their balancing payment.

There has some comment on the need to react earlier. This is easy to say but does not reflect the unprecedented number of maps requiring updating and re-digitising and extra two months required to input the huge level of additional information into the system. Data capture, which would normally take place by July, was only completed in September. In addition, the digitising of land parcels requires certain skills and knowledge and there are very few skilled operators. Therefore, it is not a situation where further staff could be readily recruited from outside. This year, all aspects of the processing of the Single Payment Scheme took longer than in previous years given the number of farmers who made alterations to their applications particularly relating to the changing of eligible areas.

The following tabular statements illustrate the payments to date under the Single Payment Scheme and Disadvantaged Areas Scheme.

2010 Single Payment Scheme

County	Fully Paid	Partially Paid	Not paid as case is Not clear
Carlow	1,232	280	116
Cavan	3,787	595	325
Clare	5,041	626	349
Cork	9,207	2,408	1,165
Donegal	6,534	578	760
Dublin	490	52	90
Galway	9,550	970	1,173
Kerry	5,683	943	867
Kildare	1,411	353	252
Kilkenny	2,289	747	363
Laois	2,144	499	241
Leitrim	2,370	639	315
Limerick	4,124	569	387
Longford	1,903	284	154
Louth	1,122	198	163
Mayo	7,746	2,163	1,274
Meath	3,147	248	247
Monaghan	3,171	438	336
Offaly	2,415	432	153
Roscommon	4,584	538	501
Sligo	3,156	381	330
Tipperary	4,978	1,303	574
Waterford	1,935	318	152
Westmeath	2,224	395	278
Wexford	2,732	846	378
Wicklow	1,326	389	317
Total	94,301	17,192	11,260

2010 Disadvantaged Areas Scheme

County	Full payment	Partial payment	Not paid as case is not clear
Carlow	495	188	64
Cavan	3,506	903	270
Clare	4,834	832	264
Cork	4,612	1,663	571
Donegal	5,550	1,362	783
Dublin	86	17	16
Galway	8,682	1,749	1,122
Kerry	5,114	1,558	727
Kildare	359	73	60
Kilkenny	1,099	490	127
Laois	1,154	384	109
Leitrim	2,068	928	327
Limerick	2,286	375	176
Longford	1,783	405	132
Louth	512	150	80
Mayo	7,136	2,510	1,210
Meath	931	275	87
Monaghan	2,983	721	234
Offaly	1,706	491	127
Roscommon	4,114	1,043	421
Sligo	3,044	551	268
Tipperary	2,932	1,080	337
Waterford	1,015	272	93
Westmeath	1,823	525	176
Wexford	840	408	166
Wicklow	1,024	439	223
Totals	68,664	19,392	8,170