Page 110 of A Programme for a Partnership Government contains a commitment that farm families and rural communities "must feel the effects of positive economic and social change." Oireachtas Members, including my office, have been inundated with calls from farming families who are currently experiencing extreme hardship due to the non-payment of funding under the basic payment scheme, BPS, and areas of natural constraint, ANC, scheme. In excess of 2,500 farmers are awaiting payments and their farms have not been inspected to date. This is not acceptable. I ask the Minister to introduce a mechanism whereby at least 80% of this funding will be paid to alleviate farmers’ credit rating difficulties well in advance of any inspection. If there are breaches of rules, there can be a subsequent clawback. Farming families are in serious difficulty trying to meet their payments. We need action on this matter.

This is an issue I have raised a number of times. Yesterday morning, between 9 a.m and 10.30 a.m., I received calls from four farmers who are desperately waiting for payments. It is six months since farmers applied for payments, which are being held up by satellite inspections. In 99% of cases, these inspections do not make any difference and there is no change. I ask that advance payments in these schemes of 85% and 70%, respectively, be made to farmers. If a deduction has to be made afterwards, there are sufficient funds available for those deductions. These people are desperate. They have bills to pay and we are approaching the Christmas period. When I rang the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine yesterday, I was told no further payments would be made until 2 December. If these people do not get their payments on that date, the payments will not be made until next year and they will pay double tax next year because they did not get their money this year.

Is the Minister of State, Deputy Doyle, dealing with this matter?

My information is that payments under the beef basic payment scheme are ahead of where they were last year. Based on the figures, there are no delays. As usual, herd numbers are being randomly selected for inspection as demanded by the European Court of Auditors.

These are being expedited. As I said to the Deputy last week, if he knows of specific cases, he should send the details on to the Department. We will then see if there are hold-ups but my information is that there are not.