Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----decided to not continue participating in GLAS for an extra year. Turning to the knowledge transfer scheme, the Deputy is right. It is tapering off coming out of the outgoing CAP. Programmes that were running had come to the end of their timeframe. In the previous year, there was €5 million in the area of knowledge transfer. Closing out those schemes this year will see that figure come down to €500,000.

However, there is new funding in regard to the knowledge transfer scheme, especially from the perspective of farm safety. The Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, is overseeing that area this year. All the schemes were continued into this year and an extra €79 million in new funding in the budget is going towards several schemes in the environmental space. Examples of the measures included in that funding this year are the pilot agri-environmental scheme, the reopening of the European Innovation Partnerships, EIP, project in farm safety, the organic scheme and the straw incorporation scheme. It is important to state as well the TAMS scheme is being fully continued as part of Pillar 2.

Regarding the opportunity to ensure farm incomes can be underpinned and protected, as I have said before, schemes tend to have their fullest membership and greatest expense at the end of a CAP cycle. Previously, we saw that schemes were discontinued for a time while a new CAP cycle was starting and that resulted in farmers missing out on significant payments during the time while they came out of one scheme and were waiting for the next one to start. We are not seeing that happen now. It took significant funding to ensure that would be the case, albeit not everyone has availed of the opportunity to continue their involvement with GLAS for another year.