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

We cannot make such payments because we were not in charge of the scheme until we designed the GLAS scheme to try to resolve the hen harrier issue. In the future those farmers with designated land will be able to avail of the GLAS and GLAS plus schemes in order that they will receive what they had been promised previously but which was not delivered. They seem to be happy about this. We are looking through the threat response plan to try to provide greater flexibility for them in terms of afforestation. That is a subject of discussion between us and the Departments of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. In terms of raw payments, we are going to go from spending about €2 million or €3 million to spending potentially €23 million to €25 million if all such farmers avail of the GLAS scheme and another top-up scheme. We have recognised that farmers with hen harrier designated land were poorly treated by the previous Government and we are trying to rectify the problem.