Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 3 March 2015
271. Deputy Martin Ferris asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if under the European Union legislation on the agri-environment options scheme or single payment scheme, whereby payments are split, persons are entitled to receive the first 75% on the agri-environment options scheme or 50% on the single payment scheme, regardless of whether their file is under inspection or not. [8894/15]
View answerEU Regulations governing the Basic Payment Scheme, formerly the Single Payment Scheme, requires the Department to carry out administrative checks to verify that the eligibility conditions for aid have been met. The regulations also require that these administrative checks be supplemented by on-the-spots checks, i.e. ground and/or remote sensing inspections. Furthermore the regulations state that payments due under the scheme shall not be made before the verification of the eligibility conditions have been finalised. Therefore, in relation to Basic Payment Scheme, where an individual application has been selected for an eligibility inspection no payment can issue to the applicant until the inspection has been completed and the results are fully processed.
Area-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 procedures, together with on-farm inspections, apply to a number of scheme payments including the Agri-environment Options Scheme (AEOS), and are necessary to ensure that applications meet the scheme conditions and cross-compliance requirements.
All AEOS 1, 2 and 3 applicants who are eligible to receive a payment in a particular Scheme year have to be subjected to a full administrative check before the first phase of payment (75%) can be released. 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.
