The Department of Agriculture’s IT system needs to be overhauled urgently, IFA deputy president Richard Kennedy has said ahead of a Charter of Farmers’ Rights committee meeting in Portlaoise on Thursday.

Kennedy said farmers’ payments are still held up because IT programs and procedures are not fit for purpose across a number of schemes.

IFA has written to the Charter of Rights Monitoring committee chair Sean Brady to ensure that the IT section of the Department is present at the committee meeting on Thursday to explain when there will be a resolution to the problems with delays.

It is unacceptable that there are still some farmers with payments held up because of a failure to get suitable IT programmes in place to deal with issues such as TAMS inspections where there are structures applied for; sanctions under the Knowledge Transfer programme; and various issues associated with GLAS, Kennedy said.

In the case of TAMS, he said there has been a litany of delays since the scheme commenced over two years ago. The inspection delays are leading to serious cashflow problems on some farms where farmers have had to renegotiate bridging finance with their lending institutions, he said.

Kennedy is to tell the chair of the committee that the charter of rights cannot allow the Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed to use IT issues as a reason for delays in payments.

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