The Department of Agriculture has committed to providing more resources to solve widespread payment delays for farm schemes seen in recent months.

Payment delays of up to six months for some schemes has caused huge anger amongst farmers affected.

Speaking at a meeting of the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee today Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed said that the Department in its 2016 budget estimates has provided for extra resources to solve the difficulties in this area. The Minister said that as many as 200 additional staff are to be hired this year.

The Minister also said that it must be noted that staff levels in the Department over the period 2008-2015 fell by over 28%.

He added that the fall in staff numbers also came at a time when the scale, range and complexity of farm schemes increased. Much of the difficulties, he said were associated with the introduction of the new Basic Payment Scheme.

“I understand that delayed payments are hugely frustrating for farmers,” the Minister conceded.

“I’m hopeful that the same difficulties that have been seen this year won’t be repeated.”

According to the Minister, most of the delays are coming from paper applications and he said the Department are encouraging more farmers to apply online.

Online applications now have access to preliminary checks for mistakes in applications and Minister Creed said that it is the Department’s ambition that applications move 100% online.

Some 130,700 Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) applications have been received by the Department of Agriculture.

Over 100,000 of these applications were made through the online process while the remainder were received in the form of paper applications.