Vol. 476 No. 7
405 Mr. Kirk asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry if he will reconsider decisions to disallow payments to farmers under area aid, headage and premium schemes where genuine clerical errors are the cause; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8375/97]
The position is that when dealing with applications from farmers under the various EU headage and premia schemes my Department may only implement the degree of flexibility which is allowed under the EU regulations governing the schemes. Generally speaking, payments are not refused simply on the basis of trivial clerical errors in the completion of application forms. Failure by farmers to properly complete application forms does, however, lead to a delay in processing. In practice many errors such as invalid tag numbers are capable of correction following consultation with applicants and this type of correction is carried out on a regular basis.
Help sheets and checklists are made available with all application forms and the forms have been revised and simplified to assist farmers and to minimise errors.
In so far as area aid applications are concerned the position is that the EU allows correction by member states of "obvious errors". One category of obvious error is defined as purely clerical and containing no risk of fraud such as boxes not filled in or information lacking, mathematical errors, figures reversed and incorrect plot numbers which can be corrected by reference to accompanying maps. Such errors may be corrected without prior notification from the applicant. Less obvious errors can be corrected only where the farmer notifies the error to my Department before he-she is made aware that any on-farm inspection is to be carried out or before he-she is notified of that error by my Department.
It is clear from the foregoing that there is flexibility for dealing with obvious errors made by farmers in completing application forms. I have also put in place a formal appeals facility in my Department to handle appeals against decisions taken under the headage and premia schemes.
