Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 11 July 2024
Public Accounts Committee
2022 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine
9:30 am
Mr. Paul Savage:
The new programme launched last September. We have had to incorporate into our systems the means to deal with all that conditionality and the criteria the Commission imposed upon us in terms of approving the programme. The Secretary General mentioned earlier that that relates to things like sensitive areas, deep peats and criteria we have to apply in a number of other areas to assess whether a plantation is allowed in a particular place. We have had a transition over recent months from the instigation of the new programme to try to shift that culture, as was mentioned. We are making it very attractive in terms of the increase in the rates.
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