Computer systems needed to pay some farmers waiting for TAMS II money will not be ready until June or July, the Department of Agriculture has revealed.

More than 500 farmers are waiting for payment under TAMS II, and the IT system needed to cater for some of their claims is still “being developed”, according to the Department.

These cases are where farmers made small over-claims on equipment or applied for items not covered by the scheme.

Of the 1,368 TAMS II payment claims submitted by farmers to date, 847 have been paid more than €10m and payments are being issued on an ongoing basis.

There are 521 outstanding payment claims, of which 75% are described as “clean cases” where the application is being worked on and payment should issue soon.

Obvious error

In 10% of cases, there is an obvious error on the application form which the regional inspector is examining before payment can issue.

A further 10% involve an issue with the claim which will lead to a reduction in payment but no penalty.

“The IT functionality to process these claims is expected to be operational in early June,” Deputy Damien English told the Dáil on Thursday on behalf of Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed. Another 5% of claims will lead to both a penalty and a reduced payment but the IT functionality to process these claims is not expected to be operational until July, Deputy English said.

Fianna Fáil TD for Louth and East Meath Declan Breathnach said it was “outrageous” that farmers are left waiting a year on their grant money because of a slight discrepancy in the amount.

He said: “It has been a case of ‘computer says no’ and there was no opportunity for staff to manually amend figures or to manually authorise payments, in cases where the discrepancy on a claim for €50,000 was as little as €30.”

A spokesperson for the Department said: “There are a small number of cases being processed, where some additional ICT functionality is required to deal with discrepancies such as over-claims made by the farmer. This ICT work is close to completion and we are hopeful of resolving these outstanding cases soon.”

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