Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is an important question here. People did not join GLAS just in the first year. They have joined GLAS 2 and GLAS 3. I am the current incumbent. Deputy McConalogue may well be the person who is facing these questions in due course. I note that Deputy Jackie Cahill also has ambitions to that position. Deputy McConalogue is surely not saying that he or Deputy Cahill would not honour the GLAS 3 applicants, who had a legitimate expectation of a five-year contract when they joined the scheme? When people joined AEOS or REPS, they had a legitimate expectation that their full contracts would be honoured. We did honour them, to the tune of more than €600 million across the entire rural development programme, RDP. That was the right thing to do. It was a liability that we inherited from the rural development programme that Deputy McConalogue's party negotiated. It is right that those GLAS applicants who joined most recently have their contracts honoured. At the core of what Deputy McConalogue is suggesting is the idea that we should not have honoured them. The parties to those schemes could have switched to GLAS on day one and become GLAS participants, but they chose not to. That was their entitlement. The commitment was €1.4 billion, and in fact we will marginally exceed that. We will spend €1.44 billion under agri-environmental schemes. Call them GLAS, REPS, AEOS or whatever one will. They are contracts the Department is bound to honour.