Vol. 488 No. 4
155 Mr. Ring asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the number of farmers in County Mayo and nation-wide on a county by county basis awaiting headage and premia payments due to the delay in validating applications by the land parcel identification system. [6426/98]
156 Mr. Ring asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food when all applications of headage and premia schemes will be fully digitised and validated under the land parcel identification system. [6427/98]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 155 and 156 together.
As the Deputy will be aware, over 134,000 farmers forwarded applications for area aid in 1997. Of these, less than 15,000 have outstanding difficulties. However, I would like to point out that under the terms of a rescheduling arrangement agreed with the European Commission, these farmers were paid their premium advances and their disadvantaged area grants.
My Department is querying the farmers with these remaining difficulties and, where required, maps are being issued to those farmers to assist with these queries. I expect that only a very small percentage of cases will remain to be resolved before the 1998 pre-printed applications are issued. It is my Department's intention to priorities this small percentage of cases early in the processing of the 1998 area aid applications received from farmers.
