Mr. Henry O'Donnell:

I will deal with the uptake of commonage farmers. We may feel it is not wise to comment too much on it until we see what the third tranche of GLAS brings. It is open and will close on 15 December 2016, after which we will then have a very clear picture of the exact number of commonage farmers have joined. Fewer farmers have joined than should have, given the roadblocks that have been put in their way. We are anxious to see whether many more farmers join in the third tranche. A number of farmers are possibly in agri-environment options schemes, AEOS, and their choices are very limited. If they want to continue in an agri-environment scheme, they will have to go into GLAS. We have dealt with a number of issues related to GLAS and commonages and have, hopefully, got some progress and resolution on the major issues farmers have.

Given that no plans have been completed and the Department has not issued any software to planners, we still have a grey area in which we are not exactly sure what a commonage management plan will entail and what the final result will be. This is not proper but it is the way it is. It has been an ongoing situation in which there are many issues with GLAS that we are not happy with. A number of them have yet to be resolved and we have large numbers of questions for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on it.

There has been a small amount of progress on farm inspections, at least regarding simple issues with maps. We have asked the Department to deal with issues beforehand rather than leaving it until the farmer is due to be paid. Although an element of it has been done, it has not been done in digital mapping and it is stopping quite a proportion of payments.