IRELAND WILL have to pay back €770,000 to the European Commission as a result of what was described as "unduly spent" money from the Common Agricultural Policy.
The recovered money was in the diary processing area for "weaknesses in sampling procedure production batches for casein".
Ireland was one of the smaller offenders in the claw-back, which this year involved €83 million for what the European Commission said were inadequate control procedures or non-compliance with EU rules on agricultural expenditure.
Under this latest decision, the 27th since the 1995 reform of the system for recovering unduly spent CAP money, funds will be recovered from the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Portugal.
The most significant individual corrections were €54.9 million charged to Spain for unauthorised planting of vineyards in years 2003 and 2004 and € 11 million charged to France for non-respect of recognition criteria concerning producers' groups operating in the fruit and vegetable sector.
"We are working extremely hard to maintain the best possible control over farm spending. The Court of Auditors has noted considerable improvements in our control system over recent years and we are striving to make things better still. This is taxpayers' money and they have a right to know it is being spent wisely," said Mariann Fischer Boel, EU Commissioner for Agriculture.