Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----the Minister will have 50,000 farmers and there will be a total gross expenditure of €250 million. As the Minister knows, the later people join GLAS, the bigger the proportion of the payment that will not fall under this rural development programme. It will fall into the next RDP, but the commitment in the RDP is for €1.25 billion. In fact, it is €1.4 billion for environmental schemes in total but €1.25 billion for GLAS within this RDP. I understand that part of that GLAS payment is rural environment protection scheme and AEOS spillover from the previous RDP. The first question, which is quite simple, is whether we will spend €250 million between REPS and AEOS. The second question is whether contracts will be backdated to 1 October to enable this payment to be made, as the Minister said, for October, November and December. Third, will the Minister pay for commonage measures even where those commonage plans have not been completed by the end of the year or may only be completed through three or four weeks? It is a very slow process walking all these commonages and preparing reports.

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