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

I asked the same question but my understanding is one cannot have a later date. As one is linked to the other, the GLAS application has to be finalised first and then the basic payment after that. We could push them back into June but that then has consequences for registration.

I would expect planners to get far more than one application per day. The fact that an average of about 700 applications are being received per day is proof of that for starters. Effectively, there are two months left. Many planners would have prepared in advance. They knew what was coming, had a pretty good idea what GLAS was going to look like and have already done an awful lot of work. They have put their applications up on the system and are waiting to simply submit. There are over 9,000 applications ready for submission, all the work having been done to date. We are making good progress. I am not saying everything is perfect, because it is not. We are looking for people to make constructive criticisms of the application process so that we can keep improving it as it goes along. If anybody had suggested that by this point in time we would have nearly 10,000 applications ready for submission, most people would have been pleasantly surprised. That is where we are. We are making good progress and will continue to monitor it tightly as time goes on.

See this speech in context