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

First, I see in the media today that the Deputy is seeking to change the structure of Pillar 1 payments. If we try to do this, we will still be here next year trying to obtain letters of comfort. We are close to reaching agreement with the Commission. The intention of trying to get letters of comfort by the middle of next month is still on track and that is when we anticipate we will be able to get them. Intense negotiations are taking place today, as they did yesterday and last week. We are negotiating not only with the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development but also with the Commissioner for the Environment and the Commissioner for Climate Action and so on.

I hope to have agreement finalised in principle on the detail of GLAS in the next few days, if possible, in order that we can open the scheme in advance of receiving a letter of comfort next month. We then hope to receive a letter of comfort next month for all of the rural development programme, not just individual schemes. That is our intention, but if something goes wrong in the meantime, I will be up-front about it. We are working night and day to try to get this done, but we have a big partner, the Commission, which needs to be satisfied.

There are 118 rural development programmes before the Commission at the moment but only nine of them have been approved. Most of those involve much smaller and simpler schemes than ours. In that context, one can understand why we are pushing as hard as we can. I thank the Commission for its help on this because it is swamped at the moment, with many countries pushing to get their rural development programmes across the line. We will continue to work with the Commission to reassure it on both the big and small schemes. We are very close to doing that and I am hopeful that we will be able to get our letter of comfort by the middle of March. That will allow us to start opening the schemes in a staggered way after that.

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