Deja Vu All Over Again
I once got into trouble with the Derry journal for my poor knowledge of French when I used that phrase - just to avoid suffering "deja vu all over again" on that point can I clarify this is a quote from
Having got that out of the way what I was thinking of was a point made by our regular commentator Seamus Close on today's Inside Politics, when we were discussing this week's revelation that the taxpayer will have to foot the bill for (A point I see that Epat N12 has already been commenting on).
Seamus pointed out that some of the over payments are being blamed by the authorities on poor mapping of land, and that the Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew had said nobody was to blame. But he reminded me that way back in 2001 the Assembly's Public Accounts Committee investigated
Their report contained the following paragraph (and this is where Yogi Berra's malapropism came to mind) "we were astounded to hear that maps as old as 1938 and 1963 were still being used by the Department and that this contributed to the ridiculous outcome that grants were being claimed on the basis of land at Clement Wilson Park, Barnett's Demesne (including car park area), Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park and Dunmurry Golf Club and included large areas of recreational land, a wildlife reserve and rosebeds. It is equally surprising that staff in the Lisburn Office handling these claims did not recognise their fraudulent nature. We welcome the assurances by the Accounting Officer that they are moving very quickly towards a much more sophisticated mapping system and that site inspections are now undertaken of all new land registered by farmers."
Good we sorted out those mapping problems so promptly.
I'm 
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