Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To correct the Deputy, we cannot do new schemes under the transition regulation. We have the facility to continue with existing schemes and, of course, that takes a significant amount of money because at the end of a CAP programme there are full participation levels and maximum cost for all of those schemes. Thankfully, with the 11% increase last year from the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and the further increase of 2% this year, we have delivered a total increase of 13% in the budget of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine over that two-year period. That increase was required to ensure these schemes could be continued and to do some new initiatives such as the results-based environment agri pilot, REAP, scheme that we kicked off last year and the soil sampling programme that will continue this year.

As regards the 50% increase in CAP co-funding that I announced yesterday, under the new suckler carbon efficiency scheme, it will deliver €150 per cow for the first ten cows and €120 per cow for the remainder of the herd. That will be within the CAP strategic plan programme for five years. The capacity will remain open to us to also support sectors in parallel with that, as was the case with the BEEP scheme. The announcement yesterday was very much about what is programmed for the full five years.

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