Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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4. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine when the rural development plan for Ireland will be approved; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48486/14]

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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This relates to when the rural development plan for Ireland will be approved by the European Union. We debated this the last day the Minister took questions and he promised to come before the agriculture committee to outline the concerns of the European Union. Unfortunately, this has not happened. Will the Minister outline his best guess of when the rural development plan will be agreed?

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I am more than willing to come before the committee but it is about finding the time to do so, given everybody's schedule. I expect we will have that discussion early in the new year. I hope I have demonstrated that I am not shy about coming before the committee to answer questions.

The rural development programme has been a frustrating process for me as we had our plans in early and we submitted them well in advance of the deadline. The problem for the Commission is it has 118 different rural development programmes for which it is trying to get approval, and Ireland is one of them. Undoubtedly, the approval process will carry over to the new year. There is an added complication as if rural development programmes are not approved, there must be a carry-over of budgets from one year to the next, which also poses a new challenge for the Commission it must overcome. There is a series of elements stacking up.

The Commission has taken on extra staff and resources to try to make progress on the rural development programmes but in reality we will not get approval for our programme in time to be able to open schemes as early as I would like, which is in the first two months of next year. We have sought an alternative way of opening schemes, anticipating approval of the rural development programme at some stage in the first half of next year or, I hope, towards the end of the first quarter next year. I have discussed with the Commissioner - it has been checked from a legal perspective - whether there could be a letter of comfort indicating the Commission is happy with our schemes in principle but that formal approval of the rural development programme will take a bit longer. If we get that letter of comfort for the Department of Finance, I am confident we can open schemes on the back of it.

I am hoping to get the letter of comfort in January so that we can open schemes toward the end of the month or in early February. The green low-carbon agri-environment scheme is a priority because people are anxious to get on with it, but we are seeking the same assurances regarding the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme and a range of other supports. It is a realistic timeframe to seek to have the letter of comfort early in the new year, with a view to obtaining formal rural development programme approval later. In the meantime, we can get schemes open, which is really what farmers are seeking. I am being as blunt and open as I can be on this.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for his reply. Given the inevitable delays that will arise, even allowing for this shimmy - it is a welcome shimmy, if it comes out - we are still looking at February before GLAS will be announced. If we take into account all of the complexities involved in requiring 30,000 farmers to draw up plans, does the Minister accept it is very unlikely that GLAS money will be paid out next year, even though he has made provision for same in the Estimate? Has he given consideration to a contingency plan for how that money might be paid to farmers legitimately in some other way? The value of direct payments to farmers is falling dramatically.

Second, it is the Minister's intention to introduce a genomics scheme. My understanding, however, is that the EU has raised several principle questions along the lines that the scheme is linked too much with Harvest 2020 and not sufficiently linked with rural development. Is that scheme likely to open in February? If not, we are looking at a huge slice of money farmers were expecting next year but which might not be available.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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What farmers want is to have a new scheme open as soon as we can open it, and that is what we will try to deliver. Whether it requires a letter of comfort to achieve it or not, farmers are not interested in that type of detail. They want a date from me for when they can apply to the scheme and put their plans in place so we can assess them, make decisions as to who is in and lock people into the scheme for a five-year period.

I have consistently said that we would not have the scheme up and running until September next year at the earliest. This is in a context where we are looking to accept 30,000 farmers into it. If we can get the scheme open in February, we will do everything we can to deliver an application process that allows farmers to apply on time and planners to put plans in place on time, which should not, by the way, be too complicated. Then we can look at fast-tracking the assessment of those applications with a view to staying as close as possible to the September target. We have budgeted some €20 million for a three-month payment under GLAS for next year. I am determined to get some payments out next year under the scheme but, most importantly, I want to get 30,000 farmers into the scheme for the next five years and get it up and running as soon as we can.

We are having difficulty with the Commission regarding the genomics scheme, but that does not mean we will not get agreement on it. We continue to have intense discussions with the Commission explaining what the proposal is all about. It takes a while to get one's head around what we are trying to do here. It is a climate change, emissions-based initiative as well as a genomics initiative. We are hopeful of getting it through on that basis, but it is taking time. We are making great progress with the Commission on GLAS, by the way.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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One of the unforeseen delays in getting GLAS off the ground could be that farmers will look for a little extra time to get their plans in. The Minister needs to get 30,000 applications; 25,000 or 20,000 will not be good enough. There could be several unforeseen delays. Are we still in the situation the Minister outlined previously such that he cannot allow GLAS to start until this entire tranche of plans has been assessed because of the issue raised by Deputy Fitzmaurice, namely, that they will have to be graded to see who is in and who is out? There can be no early starters; everybody must start on the same day. Has there been any movement on that situation to allow, for example, tier 1 applicants to commence a little earlier and so on?

Does the Minister expect the genomics scheme to be covered in the letter of comfort he is seeking? If it is not and if there is any delay in agreeing the final rural development programme, farmers will see a large hole in their pockets next year.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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We are seeking a letter of comfort on all the schemes, not just GLAS. We want to have negotiated and agreed the detail of our RDP with the Commission, but the formal process of approval takes time. In many countries, there are multiple RDPs in operation. In the United Kingdom, for example, there is a separate programme for each of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We have only one RDP but the formal approval process still takes time. If we thrash out all of the remaining issues around GLAS, beef genomics and the other proposals we are working through by mid-January, we hope to get a letter of comfort in the second half of that month, which will allow us to open schemes. We will be preparing to get them open as soon as we receive the letter of comfort. As I said, the objective is that the letter will apply to all schemes, not just GLAS.