Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I know what it is like to have delayed payments and to wait for payments to arrive because I grew up on a family farm where our income was based on the activity relating to the farm. That is why I have given such attention to making sure there are no issues with payments. Farmers had certainty last year as to what the dates would be. We gave the dates last March and we adhered to all of them. There were very high payment percentages on those dates. The one exception was ACRES.

Understanding the importance of payments and the fact that people were waiting for them, for the first time ever I took the step of issuing interim payments because I wanted farmers to get as close to the majority of their payment as possible. We issued payments of either €4,000 or €5,000. Some 82% had their balancing payment by the end of last month. We hope it will be 95% by the end of this month. In some cases, when an interim payment is made, given that it is a blunt instrument, as such, and I wanted to give a strong interim payment, there were some situations of overpayment. We are putting measures in place to understand the position of farmers as much as possible in that regard.

In regard to the scoring, 35,000 scorecards have now been issued. We need to get the rest of them issued. Co-operation, CP, teams are also engaging with farmers and holding meetings on the scores for commonages. That has been a challenging process. I accept that farmers need to get their scores so that they know what steps they can take.

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