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

I thank Senator Boyhan for raising this matter on the Commencement and for giving me an opportunity to outline the up-to-date position regarding the 2016 GLAS payments.

This and previous agri-environmental schemes provide support to participants to deliver public goods and environmental benefits that enhance Ireland's agricultural sustainability credentials. The scheme delivers overarching benefits in terms of the rural environment while addressing the mitigation of impacts of climate change, the improvement of water quality and the enhancement of biodiversity. The scheme also allows participants to improve their agricultural productivity and practices in a sustainable manner.

GLAS has a maximum annual payment of €5,000 under the general scheme, with provision for a payment of up to €7,000 known as GLAS+, where the farmer is required to give exceptional environmental commitments, in a limited number of cases. Applications under the first two tranches of the GLAS scheme resulted in almost 38,000 farmers being approved into the scheme in its first year of implementation. This represented an unprecedented level of participation in the first year of an agri-environmental scheme in Ireland. Just under 14,000 further participants have been approved under GLAS 3. This brought overall participation levels to in excess of the participation level projected in Ireland's rural development programme of 50,000 farmers.

The 2016 payments represent the first full year of payment under GLAS. Only participants in GLAS tranches 1 and 2 are eligible for a payment in respect of 2016. At the end of December 2016, there were approximately 37,500 active participants in tranches 1 and 2, of which 27,400, or over 70%, received 85% of their 2016 payments in December. These payments were valued at more than €97 million. Payments can only issue where all required validation checks have been successfully passed. The up-to-date position is that payments have now issued in 93% of cases. These payments bring the total amount paid to more than €121 million.

GLAS has a range of more than 30 actions available for selection by applicants. Under EU regulations, compliance with each action must be verified. Therefore, there are validations associated with each of these actions. As a result, there are a number of different reasons for some cases not being finalised. Many of these issues, given their complexity, require review on a case-by-case basis. This work is ongoing in the remaining 2,700 cases.My Department has been in direct contact with participants or their advisors in cases where issues remain to be resolved and is making every effort to resolve outstanding issues on a case-by-case basis. Additional information or outstanding documentation has been requested and is awaited in over 1,000 of these cases. In this regard, I would urge participating farmers to return any outstanding documentation, such as interim commonage management plans and annual low emission slurry spreading declaration forms, and to respond to queries as soon as possible to facilitate payment. In cases where these and other outstanding issues with individual applications are resolved, payments will continue to issue on an ongoing weekly basis, including further payments this week.

I am keenly aware of the need to process these cases without delay. I would like to assure the Senator that my Department officials and I are ensuring that the resources required both on the IT and administrative side are directed towards resolving the outstanding queries on these cases.