Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 9 March 2017
12. Deputy Shane Cassells asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the total number of persons in County Meath that have not received 85% of their total 2016 payment under GLAS 1, GLAS 2 and AEOS; the reason for this delay; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12360/17]
View answerI wish to ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the total number of persons in County Meath that have not received 85% of their total 2016 payment under GLAS 1, GLAS 2 and AEOS; the reason for the delay; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Under the EU regulations governing the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, and the agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, a comprehensive administrative check, including cross-checks with the land parcel identification system, must be completed before any payment can issue.
My Department, as the accredited paying agency, must ensure that, before payment issues, everything in an application that can be checked is checked as required under the regulations. Therefore, payments can only issue when all the required validation checks have been successfully passed. As issues with outstanding GLAS cases are resolved, they are being paid in weekly instalments.
With regard to 2016 payments under AEOS, the previous agri-environment scheme, just over 8,600 AEOS participants were due a payment. AEOS II participants completed their five-year contracts on 31 December 2016. Under the EU regulations governing this scheme and all other area-based payment schemes, a full check, including cross-checks with the land parcel identification system must take place before the final payment can issue. As all AEOS II participants will be receiving their final payments under the scheme, re-checks on payments made for all scheme years must be completed before final payment can be processed. This is the same procedure as applied to AEOS I participants finishing in that scheme.
To date, AEOS 2016 payments amounting to over €22 million have issued. The remaining cases are currently being checked and payments will continue to issue on an ongoing weekly basis as these cases are cleared. A total of 83 farmers in County Meath were due a 2016 payment in AEOS, of which 68 have been paid and 15 are awaiting payment.
2016 payments represent the first full year of payment under GLAS. At the end of December 2016, there were approximately 37,500 active participants in the GLAS scheme, of which 27,400 or over 71% received payments valued at over €97 million, representing 85% of their 2016 payment.
As issues with outstanding GLAS cases are resolved they are being paid in weekly payment runs. Further payments are issuing on a weekly basis with payments valued at over €110 million now issued and over 84% of participants now paid. Further payments are issuing on a weekly basis.
I thank the Minister.
I will give the Deputy the figures for County Meath.
Very briefly.
The current position is that 66 farmers in GLAS I and 39 farmers in GLAS II have yet to receive their payments and their applications continue to be processed.
I welcome the statement from the Minister and the figures he provided, as well as the statement he provided earlier to Deputy Browne in the context of this matter. Why was there not an effective system in place before this point in time, given the frustration felt by farmers? It was agreed between the farming organisations and the Department that up to 75% of payments would commence in the third week of October with the balance of the payments being made in mid-December. It was reported in The Independent farming section this week that farmers still waiting on payments may have to wait until mid-summer. If that is the case, some farmers will have waited for seven months in total.
I have met many farmers in my constituency in Meath over the past few months. I saw earlier that Deputy Burke has a parliamentary question as well about part of his county in the Castlepollard region of north Westmeath, which comes into my constituency as well.
They have had great difficulty making contact with the Department to query the reasons for the delay with the payments.
I know what the Minister has said with regard to there being no issues in terms of overtime to prioritise this matter. I appeal for this to be taken with a greater sense of urgency. What is being done specifically in that respect?
I thank Deputy Cassells for his understanding. I appreciate the imperative that he has laid down in terms of getting these payments out as quickly as possible.
GLAS is probably the most complicated of schemes. There are over 30 separate menu options available to farmers under the scheme. When we cross-reference those actions to the basic payment application, the individual plots therein and the actions, it gives rise to a complicated scenario that, in turn, has given rise to difficulty.
The truth is that in December when we pressed the "pay" button, we had hoped that everyone would be paid and had financial provision made for that. Unfortunately, as the record shows, a substantial number were not. We continue to work through all of these. The reality is that we have had to eyeball every application to find out the specific issue, whether there is a fundamental problem relating to the basic payment application or a question of plots that are split and actions on plots that do not correlate. Another question is whether the problem goes back to an error in our processing. It is complicated but I assure the Deputy that it has the necessary urgency. I cannot specifically give a time but I assure the Deputy we are making every effort to get these payments out quickly.
I thank the Minister for the candid nature of his response. It is helpful even in terms of outlining the complexity. The majority of the cases of farmers that I have been dealing with in Bellivor and Castlepollard relate to access to information and the frustration they are experiencing in that respect. They have had to make financial adjustments because they had money earmarked for projects on their farms. Those projects would have increased productivity and profits. Instead the resources have had to be put into basic day-to-day bills and the running of the farms. The Minister and his colleagues are well aware of this.
Many farms, especially in disadvantaged areas, have low margins within which to work. These delays are not fair on the farmers concerned or their families.
I know we have discussed this issue in the Chamber on several occasions. What has happened is absolutely unacceptable. The Minister indicated in his response to Deputy Cassells that the Department expected that when those responsible pressed the "pay" button in December everyone would be paid and that the Department had the money allocated for that. However, it turned out differently. That is not acceptable. Surely with proper preparation these issues could have been highlighted in advance.
I know the Minister has said today that he does not want to give a date for the outstanding payments since he may not be able to stand over it. However, those who have not been paid yet were given a date that the Minister has been unable to stand over, that is to say, last December.
Recently, I was in a field with bird cover. The farmer had completed the action. It is working well in terms of wild birds coming to use it. However, the farmer has not yet been paid for the work done. Many farmers were expecting the payment last December. Now they face a wait until the summer.
There needs to be a major review in the Department of how this came about. Politically, we need to know how the problem was not spotted in advance and why the proper resources and preparations were not put in place to deal with it.
Apart from the basic payment scheme GLAS is, by a country mile, the most popular scheme with the Department. This is because of the most recent addition of approximately 13,000 new applicants. In the early part of 2016 a further 12,000 new applications were submitted as well. It is a remarkably successful scheme. It is also complex.
With all sincerity I suggest that regardless of who would be standing in this position, the situation would not be different. We are rolling out more schemes, including complex schemes. This week, we are launching the tillage TAMS scheme. That scheme was rightly demanded by the tillage sector. There are myriad other schemes.
It is a challenge to keep the information technology systems up to speed. We could take a different approach. We could decide to try to get everything right to the nth degree before we roll out anything else. However, what we want to do is get the schemes out to farmers. We are getting payment to them. We are late with payments. I confess that and I put my hands up. However, I assure the House that we are doing everything we possibly can to get the payments out as quickly as possible.
