Tom Hayes (Tipperary South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge that there is a great deal of concern among many people living in rural Ireland. The Minister and I and our departmental officials are committed to the rural development programme, which was fought for long and hard. It was difficult to get the matching funding, but it was achieved, and the last thing we want is for the scheme to fail.

There is a great deal of hysteria about particular issues, and people are being frightened at public meetings. Public pronouncements by some individuals have been unhelpful. I refer to an example of 20 shareholders on a commonage of whom only ten are grazing the land. The 50% requirement to trigger priority access to GLAS amounts to just five farmers. That is the reality. If agreement cannot be secured between the individuals on the commonage, the commonage implementation group can sit and examine the issue.

See this speech in context