Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The environmental schemes are important anchor schemes within Pillar 2. They have had a good success rate in terms of farmers being willing to participate in them. They have returned a good deal for the rural countryside and the environment. They have been significant in respect of the income they have generated and provided for farm families. They started off with the REPS and we then moved on to the agri-environment options scheme and, more recently, the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme. The average payments under REPS 1, 2, 3 and 4, were €4,200, €4,700, €6,300 and €5,700, respectively. The average payments for AEOS 1, 2 and 3, were €3,800, €3,300 and €3,300, respectively. Under GLAS the average payment is €4,500.

The key commitment in the programme for Government is to deliver a new flagship agri-environment scheme in the next Common Agricultural policy, CAP, that will help deliver incomes significantly for farmers and deliver outcomes to contribute to environmental measures and emissions objectives as well. In advance of the new CAP kicking off in January 2023 and as part of this year's Estimate, the plan is to deliver a pilot agri-environment scheme. We are currently engaged with the European Commission to get approval for that. The objective of the scheme is that it would be paid based on a measure of 10 ha of land. My objective is to try to ensure all farmers, large or small, have a full opportunity to engage in the scheme and to benefit to the fullest extent in terms of payments under that scheme. A farmer with 10 ha will have the same opportunity to earn an income through the scheme as a farmer with 100 acres. The estimate is that the average payment under that scheme would be in and around €4,700, with the potential for a payment coming in at just under €7,000.

It is a pilot results-based scheme. It is very much subject to getting approval from the European Commission. We cannot actually run new schemes as such. We can run pilot schemes in a transition period. This is a pilot and comes with those constraints. We will be using the learnings from this results-based pilot to inform how we structure the next flagship agri-environment scheme to replace GLAS AEOS and, before those, REPS.

I will be engaging with farm organisations and farmers regarding that new flagship environmental scheme, its structure and how we can ensure it can best achieve policy objectives while, importantly, also being user-friendly and delivering on farm incomes.