Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for those questions because they give me an opportunity to clarify a number of matters on which I believe there has been some confusion. It is true to say that no scheme has been opened yet but I have said consistently since budget day that I hope to open a much more limited scheme. It is important, even if it is only a skeleton scheme, that we keep environmental schemes intact and in place. Hopefully, we will have more money to spend in future years after a Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, negotiation and we can start expanding and building on those schemes again. The idea that we would not have any environmental scheme available to which farmers could apply would be a very negative move. Even though we have severe budgetary challenges to overcome in my Department, as has every other Minister, I want to try to put some limited scheme in place that would allow farmers to apply for an environmental scheme that, hopefully, we will be able to expand and develop in future years. That is why we will make a detailed submission to the Minister, Deputy Noonan, which may already have gone.

This is not about the Department of Finance, but about my Department. I will take responsibility for the AEOS. I do not want to pass this on to a decision from the Minister for Finance - that is not the issue but rather that any money we will spend on a new AEOS will have to be found in savings from somewhere else. That is my job, to try to put a budget together that can provide for a limited new AEOS III, but we must go through the procedure of getting approval to do that. I am committed to trying to do that. It will need to happen quite quickly because farmers would need to know whether they would be eligible, what they would need to do to apply and so on. We will need to do that early in the summer and I would hope to be able to give clarity on this probably in June.

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