Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Senator Pippa Hackett):

I thank Deputy Wynne for the question. In May this year I received approval from Cabinet for an ash dieback action plan to implement the recommendations in the report of the independent review group, which I commissioned. The action plan addresses all 13 of the review group's recommendations. It provides for, among other things, an additional €79.5 million in funding to pay for a new climate action performance payment, CAPP, scheme. This payment of €5,000 per hectare is available to forest owners who fully engage with my Department's reconstitution schemes and carry out replanting. This now brings the overall financial package available to ash plantation owners who are dealing with or have dealt with ash dieback to over €230 million. I believe it is a fair and generous scheme. It was hard fought for and it delivers significant supports for those farmers impacted by this devastating disease in their plantations.

As part of the action plan, a task force was established with the responsibility of overseeing the implementation of the plan. This task force comprises officials from my Department and stakeholders, including ash forest owners. The role of the task force is to ensure that the plan is implemented in an effective way, with a co-ordinated response and resolution of obstacles to implementation. The task force has met twice, discussing each of the recommendations and associated actions and responses. Some useful clarifications have been made and actions agreed to progress the implementation of the plan.

My Department has been receiving applications for the CAPP first instalment since late August and will commence payments in the coming weeks. For the applications received so far there will be payments of over €1 million. There are many more ash owners eligible to apply for the first instalment and I strongly encourage them to do so through . I also encourage those ash forest owners who have not yet applied for the enhanced reconstitution scheme to do so. This will give them financial support to clear and reconstitute affected sites and will also enable them to apply for the new climate action performance payment of €5,000 per hectare.

See this speech in context