Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 21 February 2017
536. Deputy Aindrias Moynihan asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the total number of persons who had received no 2016 AEOS payment by 1 January 2017, in view of the commitment to have all AEOS payments issued by the end of 2016. [8227/17]
View answerUnder the EU regulations governing the Scheme payments cannot begin to issue until after 15 October each year, at the earliest. In addition, a comprehensive administrative check, including cross-checks with the Land Parcel Identification System must take place before payments can issue. As 2016 was the final scheme year for AEOS 2 participants, recheck on payments for all scheme years must be completed before final payments can be processed.
Once applications have successfully passed these checks they are processed for payment. All applicants who successfully passed the required checks were processed before year end.
There were approximately 8,600 active applicants in AEOS at the 31st December 2016. Approximately, 5,300 applicants received their 2016 AEOS payments before year end. Of the remaining 3,300 applicants, 1,016 have been issued payments since the beginning of this year, with payments continuing on a weekly basis as cases are cleared.
