Vol. 550 No. 4
255 Mr. Connaughton asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development the amount of unspent money in his Department under the subheads for 2001 of farm retirement pension scheme, young farmers installation aid scheme and rural environmental protection scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9153/02]
Under the early retirement from farming scheme there was no underspend. The Estimates provision was €82.889 million and the outturn was €84.452 million.
The Estimates provision for the rural environmental protection scheme was €215.855 million and the out turn was €164.065 million, representing an underspend of € 51.79 million. There was a number of reasons why spending on the REP scheme was less than expected. In early 2001, safeguards against the spread of foot and mouth disease prevented planners from walking the land and as a result they could not prepare new REP scheme applications. When the foot and mouth restrictions were relaxed, there was a backlog for planners to deal with. The deployment to foot and mouth duties of technical staff in my Department who would normally be involved in the processing of REP scheme applications also led to some delay in the approval of new plans and spending. In addition, my Department's accounts system had to be closed earlier in December 2001 than in other years so as to facilitate the changeover to the euro. A substantial volume of payments that would otherwise have been made in December had to be held back until January 2001. Some €3.7 million of the €4.554 million allocated to the scheme of installation aid in 2001 was unspent. The scheme was launched in February 2001 and is confined to young farmers set up on or after 1 January 2000. Applications under the scheme consist of two parts: initial application which must be made within four months of setting up on the farm; and application for payment which may be lodged within 30 months of setting up on the farm. In addition, young farmers have up to two years after the date of setting up to attain the education and viability requirements of the scheme. Accordingly, the majority of applications received were initial applications and did not come to payment stage in 2001.
