Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I ask the House to indulge me before I answer that question. I wish to pay tribute to the former Deputy Joe Walsh, who died in recent days. I think he was Ireland's longest serving Minister for Agriculture and he made a very significant contribution to modern agriculture in this country. He is someone I knew well and respected very much. I wish to pass on my condolences to his colleagues in Fianna Fáil, his friends and family. It is appropriate to do that during questions on agriculture on the day after his funeral.

On Deputy Ó Cuív's question, the draft rural development programme, RDP, was submitted to the European Commission on 3 July 2014, a number of weeks in advance of the regulatory deadline. Due to the Commission’s heavy workload in dealing simultaneously with 118 RDPs, its formal observations on the draft RDP, which were due on 3 October 2014 were not received until 20 October 2014. Since then, my officials have been systematically working through the various informational, technical and policy matters raised by the Commission. A detailed response to the Commission’s formal observation has issued.

The next step in the approval process will be a period of bilateral discussion with the Commission. It is difficult to predict exactly how long these discussions will last, given the resource constraints in the Commission and the need for the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development to co-ordinate with the range of other directorates-general which have commented on the draft RDP. Following agreement of the RDP via these bilateral discussions, the RDP must go through a formal adoption process in the Commission.

It would be a matter for the Commission as to whether it wishes to make available a copy of its observations. Those observations were essentially structured in a question format. There were 266 questions asked, many of which were technical in nature, seeking clarification on costings, legal references and so forth. If it would be helpful, I will appear before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, along with officials from my Department, to go through the questions that were asked, identify areas that may be problematic and so forth.

I am still hopeful the RDP will be approved before the end of the year but that timeline is now very tight. As Deputy Ó Cuív knows, that has implications in terms of launch dates for new schemes and so forth. My priority is to get this done as quickly as possible, but obviously because a lot of money is being sanctioned by the Commission, we need to make sure that all of its questions are answered.

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