Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

A large number of issues have been raised but I will try to deal with all of them. I accept that members' comments reflect what people are hearing on the ground. Having listened to what has been said in recent weeks, we are not blind to the issues.

Deputy Ó Cuív held up a booklet to demonstrate the complexity of the scheme, and I accept it is a complex, turgid and difficult-to-read document. To provide a little background, this is a rural development scheme which comes under the rural development programme. A number of members asked about the six-year period and the reason it is designated an agri-environment scheme. Previous schemes, including the beef data and genomic schemes in the previous two years and the suckler cow schemes, were national schemes and did not receive co-funding from the European Union. As EU co-funding is associated with the genomic programme, it must be slotted into an article within the rural development programme. In this instance, the relevant article is Article 28 of the rural development programme. Having explored all of the possibilities within the regulation, we found Article 28 was the only one into which we could slot the scheme. There are valid reasons for including it under Article 28, including that more economically and financially efficient animals are also more climate-efficient.

As to the reasons we are proceeding with the scheme, while I accept everything members have said about individual cases, it is clear that if the calving rate nationally is 80% and getting worse rather than better, one has an asset that is swallowing up profits and not delivering anything. This is a climate and profitability overhead, and it is important to do something about it.

Improving genetics is one of the principal vehicles for dealing with fertility, producing heifers that have more milk, and ensuring that weanlings are heavier at weaning time. Mr. Sean Coughlan of the ICBF is due to come before the joint committee in a couple of weeks. He knows more about this issue than I do and will be able to describe what genetics can deliver in terms of improved profitability and carbon efficiency.

On the six-year timescale for the programme, it is a statutory requirement under the rural development regulation that schemes approved under Article 28 are of six years' duration. The principle behind this is very good. As the Commission will explain, a one-year approach will not deliver the agri-environmental dividend the Commission wants agri-environment schemes to deliver. It wants measures introduced that will deliver improvements over a number of years. The more traditional agri-environment schemes include programmes with which members will be familiar, for example, the rural environment protection scheme, REPS, and the agri-environmental options scheme, AEOS. Furthermore, a farmer joining a scheme should know what he must do and how much will he be paid. This is a very sound principle and as with all sound principles, it implies difficulties. In this case, the difficulty is the commitment to actions over a six-year period during which a farmer's circumstances may change.

A number of clarifications have been issued on the nature of the six-year commitment. I will go through these and perhaps my colleagues will prompt me if I omit anything. The scheme allows for force majeure circumstances on a farm to be taken into consideration, for example, where a farmer becomes sick or loses land through no fault of his own. A variety of force majeurecircumstances are allowed under which a farmer may extract himself from the obligations without penalty. In addition, if a farmer decides for commercial reasons to lease or sell his land, he can extract himself from the scheme without penalty. If he retains enough land - in other words, the maximum payable area - to deliver his obligations under the scheme, he must do so.

The third area issue that arises is penalties. I understand precisely the reasons people are concerned about penalties and accept the comments made about the red print in the document that was circulated. In some ways, the expression, "damned if one does and damned if one does not", applies. People have to understand that they are entering a six-year scheme. On the other hand, the penalty regime in the scheme is complicated. A long list of penalties is included in the terms and conditions. However, the circumstances in which a clawback of funds can occur are rare and unusual and would require someone to disengage from the scheme. To the extent that penalties apply, they are graded in various ways. For example, if someone delivers between 80% and 100% of the data collection, a proportionate reduction will apply based on the percentage of the data submitted. If somebody delivers less than 80% of the data, no payment will issue for data collection for the year in which the breach occurs. On genotyping, if someone delivers between 90% and 100% of the genotyping, a reduction will apply to the genotyping element of the payment only, based on the percentage that has been genotyped. A penalty description is provided and the penalties are proportionate and reflect the minimum required under the regulatory requirements and approval of the Commission.

People fear that a breach of any condition of the scheme will result in a clawback of funds but that is not the case. It is important that applicants, of whom we have 30,000, engage with the Department and their Teagasc advisers and that we get this information to people as quickly as possible.

A question was asked about the level of genotyping. This is a costs incurred and income foregone scheme, as are all rural development programmes. For example, this approach also applies to the rural environment protection scheme. A framework has been built on costs incurred by the farmer. For example, if we were to reduce the 60% requirement, the minimum required would be that we reduce the payment by whatever is the cost of the genotyping and whatever overhead we have imputed for the effort involved in doing the work.

That is not something we would choose to do; we would have to do it. That is the way the payment is built up.