Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The timing of payments under rural development programme, RDP, schemes is governed by EU regulation and while the norm is that payments issue between 1 December and 30 June of the following year for area based schemes, an advance of up to 75% can be made before 1 December with the balance issuing after all inspections have been initiated. For 2015 and 2016, the Commission moved from a 75% advance and allowed member states to pay up to 85%. To comply with regulatory and audit requirements, a full suite of checks must be carried out on all payment claims and this work cannot commence until after 15 May, the closing date for submission of the basic payment scheme application. For many of the rural development programme schemes, 2016 is the first full year of payment and 2016 payments for a number of the schemes are scheduled to issue in December.

The current position for each of the schemes in the RDP in respect of 2016 payments is as follows. For the areas of natural constraint, ANC, scheme, payments are made annually to some 96,000 farmers. For 2016, the allocation is €202 million, and we are on schedule to pay this full allocation by year end. In 2015, some €207 million was paid under the scheme. Processing of the ANC scheme payments commenced on schedule during the third week in September with almost 65,000 applicants being paid a total of €140.9 million. To date, over 87,000 applicants have been paid a total of €188 million. In addition, over €10 million has been paid this year in respect of the 2015 scheme year. As is normal at this stage of the year, a number of applicants have not yet fulfilled the scheme eligibility requirements regarding stocking density but will do so, hopefully, before the end of the year.

Payments under the beef data and genomics programme are calculated on the basis of the number of calved cows in 2014 and the eligible hectares of forage land declared on the 2014 single payment scheme application. Payments amounting to €44 million have now been made to almost 24,000 farmers of which €29 million was paid to almost 16,000 farmers in December 2015. Payments in respect of 2016 scheme year will commence in December. There is an allocation of some €52 million in 2016 and it is expected to spend that allocation.

Under the RDP, knowledge transfer groups have been set up across six sectors – beef, dairy, sheep, tillage, equine and poultry. These groups will build on the success of the previous discussion groups, with the addition of one-to-one time between farmer and adviser to develop a farm improvement plan, FIP. Each farmer receives €750 per annum per group - €375 in respect of a second group, if a farmer joins two groups.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

Each facilitator receives €500 per farmer per annum, an average of €7,500 to €8,500 per group. Almost 20,000 farmers have now been approved in knowledge transfer, KT, groups which began in June 2016. No payments are due to issue until the end of year one, that is, in quarter three of 2017.

The 2016 budgeted allocation for TAMS is €35.8 million. To date 4,965 approvals have issued across the initial four tranches of the TAMS II schemes. Payment is made when the approved works have been completed. Expenditure to 14 November is just under €5 million and payment claims continue to be submitted and approved on an ongoing basis.

The REPS 2016 allocation is €4.2 million and expenditure to 14 November 2016 is €2.5 million. Projected further spend to end of year is €1 million. It is expected that outstanding REPS payments will be made in the first week of December. These will almost exclusively be payments for supplementary measures which are made one year in arrears. The bulk of REPS participants exited the scheme at the end of 2014 with less than 850 remaining in the scheme to the end of 2015.

The agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, 2016 allocation is €38.4 million and expenditure to 14 November is €15.1 million, with a projected further spend of €21 million before year end.

Under the green low carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, over €17 million has issued in respect of the 2015 scheme year. The total active population in GLAS so far is some 37,400 and payments in respect of the 2016 scheme year, the first full year of the scheme, are scheduled to commence before the end of the year. Payment can only issue to participants who pass all the required validations. The total budget for GLAS in 2016 is €142 million and it is expected to spend that allocation.

With regard to the organic farming scheme, the 2016 budget allocation is €12 million and payments to 14 November are valued at €2.6 million, with an expected spend for the full year of €10 million.

In 2016, some €500,000 was voted for the collaborative farming scheme, that is, 200 cases at the maximum of €2,500. To date, €219,000, involving 170 cases, has been paid and it is anticipated that a further €110,000, involving a further 70 cases, will be paid before year end. All amounts claimed were well under the maximum allowable, hence the greater number of cases paid.

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