The Regional Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry denied any governmental responsibility regarding the devolution of some agricultural assistance funds granted to farmers. This devolution was requested by IFAP.

Noé Rodrigues, the Regional Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, said that at the end of December 2008 IFAP informed the Regional Directorate for EU Agricultural Affairs (DRACA) that, as the accounting year 2007/2008 ended, some irregular assistance payments to the farmers were detected.   

He said that immediately after the detection of the irregularities, “IFAP was told that responsibility for this problem was totally and exclusively theirs”, the Secretary said. He clarified the matter by saying that the Region merely collects the applications and then sends them to IFAP for the payment of POSEI prizes.

In his view, this mistake of IFAP occurred because the basic prize was (erroneously) added to the following payments of the same prize, where errors had been detected. He said farmers must be informed, in a clear an unequivocal manner, about the errors committed and the need to recover the funds.