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

There is actually but we will wait to see how it goes.

I acknowledge the importance of the role of agricultural advisers in GLAS, the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme. Their professional expertise and experience are vital to the preparation of reliable GLAS applications that fully comply with regulatory and scheme requirements. That is why I have made it mandatory for all GLAS applications to be submitted by an approved GLAS adviser.

The negotiations with the European Commission on the scheme's details were long and protracted, which is why the earliest date I could open it was 23 February 2015. The original deadline set for submission of applications was 30 April. Admittedly, this was tight but there was no real opportunity to extend this without impinging upon the deadline for direct payment applications generally, a deadline fixed for many years by regulation as 15 May.

However, I have been working closely with the European Commission to get this regulatory deadline extended and I am delighted we have achieved some flexibility on this front. While we do not yet have the Commission's proposal, it is my intention to extend the GLAS deadline to 22 May, if possible, which will provide significantly more time to submit applications for this first tranche of GLAS.

To date, I am pleased a total of 9,119 applications have been created on the GLAS online application system. We are almost at the 10,000 mark and there is still quite some time to go. It is possible to push the basic payment and GLAS deadline back to the middle of June but there would be consequences to that. I am determined to get our basic payments out to farmers at the earliest possible date in mid-October. If we push the applications dates back, then the processing becomes much more difficult with the time available. I am also anxious that there would be at least a week separation between when the GLAS deadline and the basic payment closes. We do not want them all coming in on the same deadline with farmers who leave it to the last minute trying to get all their basic payment and GLAS applications in on the same day. We do not want our backs up against the wall but to have a little bit of breathing space, which is why it is the end of May for the basic payment scheme and a week earlier, 22 May, for GLAS applications. There is some flexibility with these dates but I would like us to achieve our deadlines by these dates too.

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