Just under €16m in taxpayers’ money has been budgeted for software development in the Department of Agriculture this year. While this is just a projected figure, it exceeds the €11m, €10m and €8m spent in each of the years prior to this (see table).
Just under €16m in taxpayers’ money has been budgeted for software development in the Department of Agriculture this year. While this is just a projected figure, it exceeds the €11m, €10m and €8m spent in each of the years prior to this (see table).
The increase in expenditure in 2018 includes the initiation of a new Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) Rebuild project, the Minister for Agriculture said in response to a Parliamentary Question from Fianna Fáil agriculture spokesperson Charlie McConologue.
“This project will be delivered in two years and plans to implement a new, state-of-the-art LPIS, using up-to-date technologies and providing for increased accuracy,” Michael Creed said.
In addition, the Department will spend €14.5m on IT infrastructure in 2018. This covers data lines and mobiles, hardware, internet security and software. Outside of scheme payments the infrastructure figure also covers animal welfare, food safety, marine and desktop support for members of the Department.
Current CAP
A combined total of nearly €111m will have been spent on infrastructure and software development by Ag house since the start of the current form of the Common Agricultural Policy in 2014. The IT systems handle a range of farmer schemes, including BPS, ANC, BGDP, TAMS, sheep welfare, GLAS, forestry and Knowledge Transfer.
“Since 2015 the Department has introduced over 20 new Common Agriculture Policy Schemes and the vast bulk of these are now processed end-to-end by these digital systems,” Creed said. “This transformative project has been achieved using the mix of internal staff and external support.”
He added that Ireland has the ability to draw down CAP pillar II funding at a rate that is second only to Finland, because of our computer systems.
“We are consistently delivering EU schemes and payments in a more efficient manner than our EU paying agency peers,” Creed said.
Scotland
By way of comparison, the IT system for the Scottish Department of Agriculture is currently budgeted to cost £45m (€51m) over the 2017/2018 year. Ireland’s total budget, including infrastructure and software development for 2018 should be just under €30.5m. However, the Scots only have 17,800 Basic Payment Scheme applications to process each year, where Ireland has over 122,000.
The Scottish IT system has proved unfit for purpose and farmers have received a ‘BPS loan’ in lieu of payment for the past five years. The country faces a fine from the European Union for failing to get payments out on time.
Read more
Organic farmers call on Creed to solve payment backlog
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: