Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, there is not. That is part of the problem. The Greek Presidency is trying to get agreement in principle here. Trying to define islands is one of the big problems we have had. I suspect that nothing significant will be decided next week, but let us wait and see. I will keep an open mind on it.

On the issue of commonages and the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, I wish to clarify the timing of GLAS. There have been some accusations in press releases and so forth suggesting that we are contributing to red tape and it is causing a problem. It is not. GLAS is the biggest new scheme in the rural development programme. The big demand from all farming organisations and all public representatives I have spoken to is to allow as many farmers as possible into the scheme from the outset. We have tried to build the scheme to allow 25,000 to 30,000 farmers into it at the start. That has some consequences. However, before we can let anybody into the scheme, we must get it approved by the Commission. The deadline for countries to submit their rural development programmes is the end of July, so the Commission will not even start looking at the draft submissions until then. It will largely not be working through August as that is a holiday period. It will be September before it starts working through the proposals in earnest and I suspect that, if we are lucky, we will get approval at some time in late October or November. That is my guesstimate. That would allow us, hopefully, to open a GLAS scheme in December for applicants.

We are talking about 30,000 farmers but there are not many farm advisers in the country. There are between 400 and 600. One must then calculate how many plans must be put together by each of those advisers and the organisation of that across the country, because there will be farmers in every parish who will want to get into GLAS. That process will take a number of months. Then we must ensure everybody is eligible after they have applied. After that we must go through the checks because this is the same as any funded scheme from the European Commission.

We cannot pay out money until we are sure people qualify. That is going to take some time and that is why I have said that we will work towards getting as many payments out as we can next year, within reason and budget. Those payments will continue from December of next year, or towards the end of next year, into January the following year. We will try to get as many payments done as we can and as early as we can. I can assure the members that it will not be because of a lack of effort on our behalf. It would have been much easier to start with 5,000 or 7,000 farmers, get them up and running, and then have phase 2 for another 10,000 and phase 3 for another 10,000. We are trying to get as many farmers as we can in from the outset. We will work hard to facilitate that because that is what farmers have asked us to day. We will not delay, I can assure the committee, once we get Commission approval.

In terms of commonage, I have been asked some good questions on it and shall address them. First, people have quoted the 80% rule to me. I also read, in one of the farming publications last week, another statement that farmers who are on commonage land, unless 80% of the commonage group that are involved in farming that commonage land sign up then no one will get a payment. That is simply not true. We have tiers 1, 2 and 3. In other words, if we have to choose between who is first in then farmers that can get 80% agreement on a commonage will automatically be first. Farmers who can get 50% agreement on a commonage will also be in but not on the first tier but because we are allowing 30,000 farmers in we will be well into the third tier of farmers.

The second matter refers to Deputy Ó Cuív's question. Nobody on commonage will get payments unless he or she qualifies as an active farmer and that definition has been clearly defined in Pillar 1 payments. If somebody is a carpenter in New York but historically has had a share in a commonage and is getting payments but that is not going to happen in the future.