Frank Crowley
Ceist:36 Mr. Crowley asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry when those farmers who have as yet not been paid their 1992 special beef premium grants because of computer error will be paid.
Written Answers. - Special Beef Premium Scheme.
Liz O'Donnell
Ceist:48 Ms O'Donnell asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry the number of farmers awaiting payment of unpaid premia under the 1992 schemes; the reason for the delay in making payment; and the likely completion date for all payments still outstanding.
Seymour Crawford
Ceist:84 Mr. Crawford asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry when those farmers who have as yet not been paid their 1992 special beef premium grants because of computer error will be paid.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 36, 48 and 84 together.
With regard to delays in payment arising from computer error, I assume that the Deputies are referring to applications which were found to have errors following a computer check on the ear tag numbers of animals submitted for the special beef premium scheme rather than to computer errors as such. The position is that, unfortunately, a considerable number of farmers who submitted applications for the special beef premium scheme in 1992 incorrectly transcribed the eartag numbers on to the application forms. A large number of these errors have already been corrected and work is continuing on correcting the remaining errors. The farmers involved will be paid their grants when the errors have been corrected.
The overall position with regard to payment of applications submitted in 1992 for the various premium schemes is that there are approximately 32,500 farmers awaiting payment of unpaid premia out of a total of some 243,000 applications submitted to my Department under these schemes in that year. The vast majority of unpaid cases relate to applications submitted in December 1992.
I expect that all applicants, except for query cases, will be paid by the end of next month.