While the Irish Farmers Journal revealed earlier this month that the Department of Agriculture had the highest underspend of any department at €78m according to a Government report, Minister Creed told the Dáil this week that the figure was in fact €80.2m, "with a further €23.8m of capital expenditure being carried over into 2018".

Some €33m earmarked for GLAS was not paid to farmers as "payments reached about 38,000 applicants with the remaining applications still being processed", Minister Creed explained.

KT €9m behind budget

"For Knowledge Transfer, the €9m underspend is largely due to slower than anticipated return of payment acknowledgements, which must be received from farmers before facilitators are paid," he added.

In terms of capital investment, TAMS II, forestry and organic schemes all generated lower payments to farmers than the Department's budget allowed.

There were also smaller savings on animal health thanks to lower disease levels than anticipated and on fisheries and administrative expenditure.

The underspend is smaller than in 2016, when the Department returned more than €100m in unspent funds to the Exchequer. "I am pleased that the expenditure reflects a very substantial increase in our spending on RDP schemes, which reached almost €540m in 2017 compared to €425m in 2016," Minister Creed said, highlighting that TAMS spending alone had grown from €7m to €31m in the past year.

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