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

The first two tranches of GLAS resulted in almost 38,000 farmers being approved into the scheme in its first year of implementation. This represents an unprecedented level of participation in the first year of an agri-environment scheme in Ireland. This scheme is providing support to Irish farmers to deliver environmental benefits and public goods which will enhance Ireland's agriculture sustainability credentials into the future.

This scheme is playing a critical role in enhancing Ireland's efforts to deliver sustainable agricultural production. The scheme provides support to Irish farmers aimed at enhancement of biodiversity, water quality and mitigation of future impacts of climate change while allowing Irish farmers to improve their agricultural productivity and practices in a sustainable manner. It is critical that we protect the Irish countryside for the benefit of all, and GLAS provides support to Irish producers to do this while enhancing their ability to deliver sustainable food production, which is making a critical contribution to growth in the Irish economy.

In launching the third tranche of GLAS, I was fully aware of the need to maximise participation in the scheme, in particular to maximise the participation of farmers with the most important environmental assets and farmers who can deliver the actions with greatest impact environmentally. Given the interest in the scheme to date, I am confident that the third tranche will result in participation levels meeting expectations and result in all the funding provided for in Ireland's Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 being used. It is clear given the interest in the third tranche to date that the overall target participation level for the scheme of at least 50,000 farmers can be met. This will mean that by 2017, 50,000 farmers will be fully participating in GLAS, delivering benefits which will enhance the Irish environment for many years to come.

Selection into the scheme will depend on the level of applications received and the available funding, so I would again urge farmers, in consultation with their advisers, to select the most environmentally impactful actions on their applications as this will increase their chances of selection into the scheme. The same criteria for priority access to the scheme as applied in previous tranches will be applied to GLAS 3.

I reiterate that given the projected level of participation in the scheme, all available European funds and matching funds over the rural development plan programming period will be fully utilised.

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