Vol. 471 No. 7
406 Mr. Ellis asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry the action, if any, he proposes to take to arrange headage and premium payments to farmers whose area aid applications have been mishandled by the area aid section of his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21958/96]
The position is that before payment can issue to any applicant under headage and premium schemes, other than the ewe premium and slaughter premium schemes and applicants with under 15 livestock units, a valid area aid application must be submitted. As part of the integrated administration and control system, required by the EU, Ireland was committed to developing a new area aid related land parcel identification system (LPIS) in 1996. This involved the digitisation, on a computer database, of all land parcels outlined on maps supplied by farmers between 1993 and 1995. In 1996, area aid application forms were issued to farmers on which were printed, in so far as it was possible to do so, the unique land parcel identification number and gross area for land parcels declared by them in 1995. Farmers were also given copies of their 1995 applications so that they could relate the new LPIS numbers with the slots they had declared and shown on maps between 1993 and 1995. The intention was that in those cases where there was no change in lands being farmed between 1995 and 1996 the farmers concerned, having checked the pre-printed data on the 1996 application form against the maps supplied, would simply complete the application form and return it to the area aid unit. It was anticipated that up to 40,000 applications would require amendment and redigitising of maps. As it turned out however over 93,000 of the 131,000 area aid applications submitted by farmers in 1996 required amendment and the associated maps had to be redigitised. I believe that given the magnitude and complexity of the task involved in introducing the new LPIS, the area aid unit of my Department has achieved very significant progress in a relatively short period and I would not accept that area aid applications were mishandled.
Given the increased levels of checks and controls associated with the new LPIS it was inevitable that some delay in making payments, when measured against the 1995 performance, would arise. Notwithstanding this, so far in 1996, some 914,000 payments totalling over £666 million have been made to farmers under the various headage and premia schemes including the BSE compensation package. The position with regard to the 1996 schemes is that payments commenced on target and some 486,000 payments valued at £408 million have been made under these schemes to date. This compares most favourably with the payment positions at similar times in 1994 and previous years wich were as follows:
|
Scheme Year |
Number of Payments |
Amount Paid |
|
£m |
||
|
1994 |
308,100 |
282.9 |
|
1993 |
95,000 |
117.1 |
|
1992 |
227,400 |
165.6 |
