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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 10 Dec 1996

Vol. 472 No. 6

Adjournment Debate. - Area Aid Scheme.

Area aid has become an administrative nightmare. Farmers trying to make contact with Hume House find it virtually impossible to get a free telephone line into the building. As we all know, area aid maps are vital to the payment of a whole range of supports to the agricultural industry and mapping errors have immediate implications down the administrative line. Many farmers are losing large sums of money in aid because of relatively trivial errors. It should be possible to decentralise the administrative arrangements on a regional basis. Such a move would ease considerably the pressure and frustration of farmers and those who work with area aid generally.

The area aid arrangement came into place because of the supports which are available from the Community for the agricultural industry. Only time will tell whether those arrangements will change in future. However, it is clear there are serious difficulties at present. Last week I spent a considerable amount of time trying to contact the office and it is virtually impossible to contact it by telephone. The staff in the office are helpful when one succeeds in getting through, but there is still a problem with the huge volume of work they must process and minor mapping errors have very serious implications for the payment of the beef premium, the suckler cow premium and the range of payments dependent on it.

While I know the completion of the process of computerisation is in its final throes, I do not see why the office cannot be decentralised even on a temporary basis to see whether it would work more efficiently and provide a better service to the individual farmers who are so dependent on the support which flows from it.

In 1993, the first year of its existence, the administration of the area aid scheme was carried out on a decentralised basis as far as almost 90 per cent of all area aid applications were concerned. In that year all forage only area aid applications were processed in the local offices of my Department around the country and only the arable aid applications — which constituted as few as 11 to 12 per cent of all applications — were processed in the Department's head office in Dublin and Cavan.

This decentralised method of operation did not work very well. Limited resources meant that the extra work of processing the area aid applications placed an intolerable burden on those local offices during a period when they had to cope with a huge increase in other premium and headage work resulting from the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy carried out by the EU in 1992. Limited accommodation meant that when forage only area aid applicants had to submit maps in later years there would not be enough space in the local offices to store them. The EU Commission commented unfavourably on splitting the work between three different types of locations, the Department's local offices, its head office in Dublin and its office in Cavan, and criticised the resulting lack of co-ordination between processing, controlling and inspecting applications to which this fragmented approach gave rise. Accordingly, the processing of all forage only area aid applications was transferred to Hume House in Dublin in 1994 and the processing of all area aid applications, both for forage only and for arable aid, was centralised in one unit in that building in 1995.

All things considered, it was just as well this was done. The relevant EU regulations required Ireland and all other member states to put in place by 1 January 1997 as land parcel identification system whereby every parcel of land declared by farmers on their area aid applications would be given a unique identity number and a digitised area and would have its boundaries shown on maps to be issued to those farmers. Difficult as this task has been with one centralised area aid unit in Hume House, it would have been totally impossible if we had the fragmented situation of 27 different locations as in 1993.

The result of this centralisation has not been perfection, but it has been much better than what would have resulted from any alternative. As of today, some £688 million has been paid in 1996 under all headage and premia schemes compared to only £655 million on the same date in 1995. The total amount paid so far in 1996 under the 1996 schemes is just over £426 million compared to only £408 million paid by 10 December 1995 under the 1995 schemes, while the total number of payments made to 1996 scheme applicants as of today is 364,500, slightly larger than the number made by 10 December last year to 1995 applicants. As most of these 1996 payments depend on clearance of 1996 area aid applications, it can be seen that good progress is being made with those area aid applications, and I assure this House that that rate of progress will be maintained.

I am aware, of course, that those farmers not yet paid are trying to contact the area aid unit for an explanation. From Monday, 2 December 1996, a freephone number has been in place to facilitate farmers in contacting the unit. Improving telecommunication links to the unit in this and in any other way necessary is the key to solving the contact problem mentioned by Deputy Kirk rather than any proposal to decentralise the work involved again.

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