I thank the Chair for selecting this matter for the Adjournment and the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development for coming into the House to reply.
It was with a degree of regret and reluctance that I tabled this item for the Adjournment, but I did so out of a sense of frustration that I and many farmers in County Galway have experienced concerning matters I will relate to the Minister, to which I referred during a short conversation I had with him recently.
I draw his attention to the fact that a litany of serious activities carried out in what appears to be an organised manner by the senior officer of the Galway FDS office is causing serious hardship to many farmers in County Galway. These matters date back a number of years. I will indicate my experience of matters brought to my attention by constituents and colleagues during the past three years.
The first issue relates to a case in County Galway where the Department's regional inspector took it upon himself to investigate a REPS application which complied fully with the terms, conditions and criteria of the scheme, on the basis of an issue not related to the Department. The regional inspector decided that the applicant should be excluded from the scheme on tenuous grounds. The applicant took the Department to court and as a result the Department was ordered immediately to pay in full the grants due to the applicant. Does the Minister consider that an efficient use of staff resources and taxpayers' money?
There are also two cases, with which I am familiar, where the official intimidated and bullied REPS applicants out of the scheme by reducing payments in one case and by expulsion from the scheme in the other. These two applicants had complied fully with the terms and conditions of the scheme existing at that time.
There are several similar cases well know to that official that were approved by him. In one such approved case pertinent information that would have resulted in a different outcome was conveniently ignored and he used his rules to put through and issue a payment on foot of the claim of an applicant who was ineligible to participate in the scheme under the rules the apply to it. I am prepared to supply the Minister with the names and references of all cases I mentioned.
Among the tactics employed in the cases to which I referred are changing the goal posts, when one condition would not stick, another new problem was found to deny the applicants concerned their entitlements; inordinate delays in responding to queries; the removal of material from files requested under the Freedom of Information Act; gross distortion of information on files from third parties in defence of the Department's position on applicants' claims, which was also brought to light as a result of information secured under the FOI Act; and the interrogation of third parties under false pretences.
It has also come to my notice that a possible case involving discrimination on religious grounds has surfaced in the same office. Following representations by several elected representatives and by departmental officials, it was decided to pay the outstanding grant payments due immediately to the applicant concerned. The judgment of that official in that case does not befit the Civil Service of this State.
With regard to staff morale in the Galway office, several staff members, who are farmers or whose family members are involved in farming, are currently or have recently been subject to the most vindictive and personalised investigation of their farming activities. In some cases, these investigations have carried on for years without conclusion. The people concerned consider the investigations are purely an exercise in control and subordination. "Bullying" and "a power trip" are among the terms that were used to describe them to me. It does not require a great imagination to understand what working in the Galway offices of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development is like.
I wish to make a few points on my dealings with the Department generally. I will preface my remarks by saying it is not surprising that the Department regularly features near the top of the Ombudsman's league table.
I have been involved in a case appealed to the Department's appeal unit. I was invited by the principal officer to make an oral submission to the appeal unit on behalf of a constituent. It later transpired that a final decision of the appeal had been made some weeks previous to the oral hearing. In the same case an assistant principal who had made 12 separate comments on the file considered himself suitable to sit on that appeals board.
I stress my raising this matter is not motivated by a personal grudge or party politics. I raise it purely in the interest of fair play and the good name of the Department. I call on the Minister to set up immediately an independent investigation into these matters and particularly the official concerned.