In the context of the Rural Development Programme 2015 - 2020 the Department has delivered over twenty new schemes that were supported by IT capability in the last two years. In the first two years of the current RDP programme my Department has already implemented substantially more RDP schemes than were implemented over the entire ten year lifetime of the previous RDP programme. To date Ireland has drawn down funding at a rate that is 2.4 times higher than the EU average. This rate of delivery and draw-down would not have been possible without the availability of high quality complex IT software systems to support the business units in operating these schemes. Since 2014 my Department has adopted a policy of implementing fully digital end-to-end support for all but the smallest of schemes.
My Department has an excellent record in the delivery of high quality ICT systems. In that respect my Department is ahead of the rest of our European partners and is also highly regarded across the Civil and Public Service. We have been consistently among the first to make payments in the EU.
A number of issues arose in particular in relation to the GLAS system with additional functionality being required to deal with non standard cases. Significant progress has been made in relation to payments in recent months with over 93% of GLAS I and II applicants now paid with documentation awaited from a further 1,200 applicants. Another 1,400 applications are under review.
All but a very small amount of outstanding work in relation to the GLAS scheme has been addressed and plans are in place to address this over the coming period. Updates of the software required to process applications for the various schemes are applied on an ongoing basis.
