Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his statement. I have no problem with where the excess expenditure is targeted to go or anything like that. How does the Department decide which schemes get the additional funding and which schemes do not? It has been mentioned by other members but I am particularly thinking of the organic farming scheme, which had 111 applications, of which only 55 were successful. Despite having scored over the amount of points the Department required, the unsuccessful applications were not funded. I can see the increase in funding to the GLAS, the TAMS and to every other scheme. They have got funding so I wonder why the organic farming scheme was not supported because it is a worthwhile scheme for the direction we need to go in to deal with climate change. It is positive there was such a large request for people to take up the organic farming scheme and it is frustrating for those people to see they meet the criteria in the points system the Department set down but that the Department does not then fund them. That is difficult for them to accept. How was the decision arrived at not to fund the organic farming scheme but to fund these other schemes?