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

I am delivering what I said I would deliver, which is to increase incrementally and as quickly as we can the numbers coming into GLAS to get expenditure up to the maximum we have committed to under the scheme. We are getting there faster than I think most people predicted, but it cannot happen overnight and everybody understands that.

There is a particular challenge with putting commonage GLAS in place, something the Deputy and I have spoken about many times. That is why we are showing significant flexibility in giving time to get full sign-off on those GLAS plans. There will be plenty of time to get that finished.

In the meantime, farmers will be paid as long as they have committed to adherence to that plan, even before it is fully finalised and signed off. The commitment they are making in commonage areas will ensure they get early receipt of their GLAS payment, which is about as flexible as we could possibly be. A huge number of commonage farmers are now part of the GLAS commonage project. It has been very successful as anyone would have to accept. When one looks at what is being committed to now in terms of some of the headline outcomes from GLAS, they are hugely successful. They include hectarage covered as well as commitments to hedgerows, native trees, orchards and stone walling. Some 90,000 bird boxes and 80,000 bat boxes are to be erected in addition to protecting 3,000 archaeological monuments and planting 8,000 hectares of wild bird cover. GLAS is about delivering sustainable outcomes across farmland in rural Ireland and paying farmers properly to do that. We will have 50,000 farmers as part of that scheme within the next few years. There will be a cross-section across all farming activities, but in particular there will be a very strong cohort of commonage farmers.

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