Everybody welcomes the four year funding programme, but in case it would have got across here that it is only the taxpayers via the Department of Agriculture who are involved, let me say farmers will be contributing much more than the Department, as the Minister knows well. Does the Minister think it proper and correct that farmers who had either a TB or brucellosis stall have to wait six to eight months for their payment, considering they have no income in the meantime? Surely in Agriculture House that should not be allowed. I can give five or six instances of where people were cleaned out by those two terrible diseases and still they have not been paid. Finally, is it reasonable to expect the smallest of farmers who would not have a taxable income in five years, never mind one, to have to produce a tax number to the Department of Agriculture and Food before they get their grant when animal disease has hit their farms?

In relation to the delay of the order the Deputy mentioned, that is undue delay. My information is that in normal circumstances it takes four to five weeks from the date of reactor collection to the date of payment of reactor grants.

It is not happening.

If the Deputy or any other Deputy has indications of delays of the kind mentioned please let me be aware of them and I will take it up.

The Department have been aware.

It is not just my Department any more, as the Deputy knows, who are responsible now. ERAD are responsible. The farmers' organisations are all involved with it. It is a special board set up for this purpose, not the Department. If the Deputy will let me have the information I will pass it on to them.

I want to call in some other Deputies.

I have one brief supplementary. I think it is important. I want to get it clear.

I think we are making very little progress today.

I know, but it is very important.

That may be very true but many Deputies in the House at the moment are anticipating a reply to their questions also.

A brief question.

Very brief.

I have been informed that not enough staff are provided by the Department of Agriculture and Food to issue the cheques. This has nothing to do with ERAD. They have the cheque approved for payment. Is that correct?

Let me make it clear. I am not attributing delay, nor do I propose to do so, to ERAD in this case. They have the primary responsibility for notifying reactors and matters of that kind because that is their role. To the extent that the transmission of payment is a matter of concern as I have indicated, the whole system is being fully computerised. I hope that what is literally a computer programme will deal with whatever problem there is.

I would like to put it to the Minister that if the delays in paying grants are due to lack to staff, 250,000 people are unemployed and are paid by the State to do nothing. Would it not be more logical for the Minister to take some of them on to his staff and pay them to do something?

I am afraid we are having a deviation from the subject matter.

Will the Minister agree he has a limited budget in this regard arising from cutbacks and there is a monthly quota budget for this purpose, and, arising from the fact that the demand is higher than the budget will allow, this is causing cutbacks and nothing short of that?

No, there is no monthly quota. That is totally to misunderstand the position. I acknowledge what Deputy Connaughton has said. This is the biggest budget ever made available and it will last over a four year programme. As Deputy Connaughton has said, it is contributed to a major extent by the farmers themselves. There is no question of a monthly budget. It is a multi-annual programme being implemented by ERAD.