Vol. 460 No. 5
90 Mr. Ellis asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry if he will have arrangements made to allow farmers who made errors in their 1994 area aid applications to rectify these errors as he did in respect of applications for 1995. [1606/96]
The position is that under EU Regulations herdowners have only up to 15 May of the relevant year to amend or correct errors on their area aid application forms.
If, however, the Deputy is referring to the recent acceptance by the EU of a proposal submitted by me to overcome the problem of herdowners failing to submit their 1995 area aid applications or submitting them late, I have to say that applying such a concession is not possible for 1994 and in any event a problem on a similar scale did not apply in 1994. The basis of the recent concession was that when my Department issued pre-printed area aid application forms in 1995, containing details submitted on the 1994 area aid application, a number of herdowners with forage area misunderstood that they had to sign the form and return it to my Department when their forage area was not going to change for 1995. The European Commission accepted that the Department's efforts to streamline procedures for the farmers may have contributed to this confusion and therefore agreed to our proposal that forage applicants who did not submit an area aid application in 1995 or submitted it late could have their 1994 area aid application accepted as their 1995 application provided the forage area declared in 1995 is exactly the same as 1994.
My Department did not issue pre-printed area aids forms to farmers in 1994 and consequently no grounds exist for a similar concession in 1995.
