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

I will try to move through the questions more quickly. We will spend €20 million on GLAS this year. There will be 26,000 farmers in GLAS. We will open a second round of GLAS for applications starting, hopefully, in the week of 12 October. We will accept another 10,000 or so. They will start their membership of GLAS from 1 January next and they will be paid next year. There will be approximately 36,000 farmers in GLAS.

We are moving towards the 50,000 figure. Some people would like us to take in more than 10,000 this time but we must be responsible in scaling up GLAS. We cannot spend €250 million on GLAS next year. I would love to be able to do it, but we cannot. We never said we would be able to do that. We said we would accept as many farmers as we could from the first day and 26,000 was far more than most people were seeking when it was being designed. To have 36,000 in it by the end of the first year is not a bad performance. We will take in the other 15,000 as soon as we can afford to commit the full €0.25 billion a year that will be spent on GLAS. It will be done as soon as possible.

A number of members asked about beef genomics. We are setting up a working group and the farming organisations will be included in it. When the beef genomics scheme was launched there were concerns that it was too complicated and unworkable. To be honest, the Department should have done more in terms of information meetings at that point. We have tried to make up for that by holding those meetings in different parts of the country and we will do more of that. Many people have been reassured about beef genomics. I attended a number of public meetings and there was talk that there would be a mass exodus from the programme and that there would be no more than 5,000 farmers in it. There are almost 30,000 farmers in the programme. A small number of farmers decided to pull out for their own reasons, but the vast majority of people are staying in beef genomics and are now talking it up.

We have written to everybody in the scheme to give them a detailed outline of how it will work. The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, ICBF, has given farmers information on qualification criteria, and 90% of the farmers in the scheme are already at a star rating in their herds that they are required to reach by 2018-19. They are at that point now. It is about bringing the other 10% up to that standard in the next few years by improving the information they have about breeding, linked to both performance data and the DNA of their herds. In time, the beef genomics scheme will be one of the most innovative schemes ever introduced as part of a rural development programme. Of course, there are challenges at the start to ensure that people understand what is required of them. The farming organisations have been involved in that. They are not shy about telling me when there are problems. There will be a mid-term review of the scheme at the end of next year and if there are problems and changes are required, we will make the changes. I have said that previously. We are trying to help farmers with this, not catch them out. I believe beef genomics will be a big success. We have tied up a large amount of money in it, so it must be.

Deputy Penrose asked many questions. I answered the question about GLAS and the €250 million. We will reach that as soon as possible, but it will not be next year. Expenditure on TAMS will be €34 million this year. Next year it will be much more. Expenditure on TAMS has proven remarkably difficult to estimate. There will be less spent this year than we were expecting.

We will need to reallocate some of that money to make sure we get the expenditure, and we need to carry over some of the money into next year because the TAMS bills will keep on coming. They do not respect calendar years.

On knowledge transfer schemes, some of the Teagasc advisers have a concern that there may be a tax liability with regard to the form of payment that is being proposed for them as individuals. We need to address that issue with the Revenue Commissioners. It is a question of making sure they are paid through the Teagasc infrastructure. When I read this story it was the first time I had come across it, but I will do my best to address it.

The working group on beef data will very much involve the farming organisations, who asked for that and will get it. On land mobility, one of the great successes that has been quietly happening in agriculture is the move away from conacre towards long-term leasing since we made the tax changes to encourage that over the past couple of years. The increase in the numbers of farmers in long-term leasing is significantly up, maybe by 27%, and we need to keep pushing it because for young farmers to get a piece of land for 11 months is a disaster on lots of levels, especially when it comes to borrowing money on the back of it and investing in the soil in a field if they do not know they are going to have it the following year. We need to get long-term leasing in place, and it is starting to work.

Self-employed tax credits are a matter for Deputy Michael Noonan. I am always supportive of farmers and try to help their income levels. We have a very able team of people negotiating with the Department of Finance, and they got a great result last year. The conversation is continuing this year so we will hopefully get a good result in a few weeks' time.

There is no commitment from the Department of Finance on income averaging in forestry. I would like it to consider this, and it was very much part of discussions between our Department and the Department of Finance last year in the build-up to the budget, as it has continued to be. If there is no income averaging for people in forestry, they will cut a certain amount of trees up until the threshold where taxation kicks in.