Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Dillon and the other officials. I have a few questions regarding GLAS, which I have raised with the Minister previously. I appreciate the officials have received replies from the Commission regarding issues. I am a former REPS planner and there is a great deal of concern among farmers and planners about the deadline and the scale of what is required to complete the process of preparing complete commonage plans and individual plans for farmers. There is a perception that many planners, where they have a choice, will deal with every non-commonage farmer before even considering a commonage farmer because they are anxious to get work done. They have lists of existing clients or other clients who may be interested and they will deal with everyone bar the commonage farmers first. One of the aims traditionally was to include Natura lands to give options to farmers to participate in schemes on them. If all the other farmers draw up plans and the commonage farmers are left to the end, that defeats the purpose of providing funding for Natura lands.

I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív and others about the Department controlling the commonage plan either by choosing an adviser or going to tender to select an organisation to deal with this. It is probably late in the day to do this now but asking a large number of farmers to pick one person to do the job poses huge difficulties in the context of payments under the plan and controlling it.

Approximately 50% of farmers have more than one commonage area in their single payment scheme application. Five or six townlands have to be dealt with on some forms. On the basis that they have their individual plan and are party to five or six other commonage plans which they must pay for, set up and attend meetings about, it is a minefield in respect of how this will be addressed.

I ask that consideration be given before GLAS opens to allow farmers to express an interest that they wish to participate in the scheme and that the deadline be extended to the end of 2015 to enable commonage farmers to prepare plans because there will be a time lag. This will also give the Department time to examine the allocation of individual commonages to one planner or organisation.

I understand farmers who are in AEOS 1, 2 or 3 have the option to transfer to GLAS. Will the officials clarify whether there is an option or a requirement? I spoke to a planner yesterday who said it was a requirement that they transfer to the scheme. Can they be counted in terms of the 50%? They are in an environmental programme and, therefore, they should be counted. In most cases in my experience, farmers who were in REPS 1 transferred to REPS 2 and 3 and so on and, under various schemes, they transferred where they could.

The GLAS scheme is an important programme for commonages and it is important the programme is workable. Will the officials comment on that?

Before we discuss undergrazing, overgrazing and forage, may I clarify if we are dealing with the single payment and the reduction in forage areas?