Mr Buchanan: Why has it taken the Minister so long to identify bureaucracy savings in her Department when overstaffing and bureaucratic inefficiency is so apparent? Does the Minister really believe that it is not possible to identify savings in a system that needs up to nine officials, and takes nine months, to process a single farm payment application?

Ms Gildernew: The Member will agree that farmers find it difficult to deal with the fact that many of the Department’s regulations come from Europe. The Department needs to consider how it can reduce bureaucracy and the administrative burden on farmers, and it is discussing ways to achieve that with EU officials. One of the first things that the Department did as a result of the Ulster Farmers’ Union’s (UFU) Cut it Out campaign was to address bureaucracy. Although the Department took some time to agree the composition of the panel with the Department of the Environment, it is now working, and we will soon see positive results. However, we cannot solve all problems immediately.

Mr Burns: The reduction of paperwork is one of the five basic recommendations outlined in the UFU’s ‘Five Steps to a Better Future’ to cut down on red tape in the farming industry. Can the Minister tell us how many of the five recommendations she has implemented to date?

Ms Gildernew: Work on four of the five recommendations is ongoing, and they are works in progress. I examined, and consulted widely on, the Agricultural Wages Board, and I decided that I would not progress that recommendation.