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

We are committed to paying them for five years. The Deputy has to accept that once the RDP funding was secured, we had to submit a rural development plan to Brussels and it had to approve it. Once we got approval, we had to invite applications and payments GLAS payments began in late 2015. Then it was opened up to new applicants. The number that will ultimately benefit from this is 50,000. However, this will not fall neatly into the boxes that the Deputy seems to be dictating and it has never done so, nor has it ever done so in REPS and AEOS. The Deputy's suggestion would mean that new applicants to the scheme now would have only three years' entitlements. That is surely unfair.

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