Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 12 December 2013
13. Deputy Martin Ferris asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will amend the system in his Department to facilitate the release of 75% of rural environment protection scheme and agri-environment option scheme payments to all farmers in December and not hold up payments until the whole file is completed as any retention will be deducted from the remaining 25%; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [53108/13]
View answerArea-based schemes under the Rural Development Programme, 2007-13, are subject to EU Regulations which require detailed administrative checks on all applications, including cross checks with the Land Parcel Identification System, to be completed before payments can issue. These rigorous procedures, together with on-farm inspections, apply to a number of scheme payments including the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) and the Agri-environment Options Scheme (AEOS), and are necessary to ensure that applications meet the scheme conditions and cross-compliance requirements.
All of the 29,253 REPS 4 and the 13,746 AEOS 1 and 2 applicants who are eligible to receive a payment in 2013 have to be subjected to a full administrative check before the first phase of payment (75%) can be released. All of these administrative checks have been completed and payments commenced in November and will issue on a continuous basis until all payments are complete. In a certain number of cases the administrative checks raised issues and queries which require detailed examination. Department staff are working to resolve these as quickly as possible. Many of these cases, will, however, require the applicants’ to supply further information such as soil tests before payment can issue.
The LPIS Review exercise which will be completed shortly, resulted in area changes for some applicants, but has not held up the 75% payment in respect of either the REPS or the AEOS schemes and any impacts are being taken into account at either the 75% or 25% payment stage. The balancing payment of 25% is issued when all of the required control inspections are completed which is again laid out in the EU governing regulations. It is anticipated that these balancing payments will commence in mid December for all of those applicants whose files are in order. A total of €148 m will be spent on REPS and €51m on AEOS by the end of the year, in accordance with the budget allocation for these schemes.
