Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 3 July 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Agricultural Schemes: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

5:30 pm

Mr. Paul Savage:

In the normal course of events we will announce, publish and publicise the scheme when it becomes available. We are happy to engage with stakeholders as appropriate on the detail of it and how we go about it in making sure people understand the contents of the scheme and how to go about participating in it. We will certainly be doing that and trying to publicise the scheme and making as many people as possible aware of it. We will wait and see what their reaction to it is, what the openness to it is and what the uptake will be. As with other schemes, we will respond accordingly to any issue or query raised by the industry or sector in how we might operate it or how it might suit them in terms of putting arrangements in place. It is probably fair to say we will engage in the normal way and we will endeavour to make sure people are fully aware of the provisions of the scheme and that anybody interested in participating in it has the opportunity to do so. This is essentially the plan from our point of view.