Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister to the House. While he is drawing his breath, I will ask Senator Boyhan to outline his case.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister, Deputy Creed, to the House. He will have an opportunity to get water and draw his breath. I thank him for attending personally because this is an important issue. I spent last Saturday in Balmoral, Northern Ireland, at the agricultural show. It was amazing how many farmers from the South were there. One of the major topics of conversation besides Brexit was their GLAS 1 and 2 payments. It was interesting. The Irish Farmers Journal had a large stand at the show. Many people, particularly farmers from the Republic, gravitated to this issue. This week, there was a headline in The Irish Timesreferring to how more than 2,000 farmers had been left in limbo over their GLAS 1 and 2 payments from the Department. This is becoming a bit of a joke.

On 21 February, I raised the fact that a number of farmers had still not been paid GLAS 1 and 2 payments under the terms and conditions of the 2015-20 farmers' charter of rights. Nearly three months on and there has been little progress. More than 2,000 farmers are making a strong case for payments to which they believe they are entitled. As the Minister will be aware, many of them have absorbed the costs involved in joining GLAS 1 and 2. For example, they have paid upfront for GLAS 1 nutrition and management plans, commonage plans and soil sampling plans. Other costs include bird coverage and tree planting. The Minister knows the schemes involved. Farmers are spending on the strength of the grant payments that they are expecting from the Department. They have upheld their side of the conditions applying to the scheme and have incurred significant costs.

I took the time yesterday to examine GLAS payments and who co-funds them. They are co-funded by the Exchequer and the European Agriculture Fund for Rural Development, EAFRD. There are obligations in that regard. I also took the time to read the farmers' charter of rights, which the Department and the Minister's predecessors signed up to.

Farmers want to know when the Minister will be in a position to process all outstanding payments. Will he confirm whether more than 2,000 farmers are still waiting to receive GLAS payments? This matter is critical and there can be no further delays. It needs to be addressed urgently.

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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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.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank the Minister for that comprehensive response. I wish to comment on two things he has said in his response. There are about 1,000 queries on validation and process. That is fair enough. He has to apply the scheme. The Minister has not confirmed this, but according to official figures this week there are more than 2,090 outstanding issues. If 1,000 is subtracted from 2,000 - we will round it off - there are still 1,000 people whom the Minister has not addressed in this response. He says there are 1,000 but we know that research published this week in the Irish Farmers' Journal, which I have shared with the Minister, confirmed that more than 2,000 people have been identified as in need of the money. I am clearly aware of GLAS I and GLAS II and I did not go into any other GLAS systems. I know exactly where the Minister is coming from and I fully understand the GLAS I and GLAS II schemes and that they are the only two schemes eligible for payment in respect of 2016.

I thank the Minister. The important thing is to keep the communication going and perhaps to promote the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine through the Irish Farmers' Journaland other agricultural methods of communication, including the agriculture websites. Clearly there is a lot of misunderstanding and frustration and many people are saying that they will not sign up to another scheme in the future. That is a remarkable pity because this is a really good scheme. I thank the Minister and I would appreciate if he could keep the communication with the farming community in general going, which I know he is committed to doing. There is concern and frustration and people are out of pocket. I thank the Minister for his time.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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I am sure the Senator will keep the Minister on his toes.

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Senator Boyhan for raising this matter. It is unfortunate that we are in this situation. I believe the Senator has indicated that he very much values the scheme, and we in the Department certainly do as well. It is innovative and it is part of our climate mitigation effort. We have been in contact with all farmers by text message. We have written to 1,270 - I believe that is the figure - on specific issues on which we require documentation. We will be in contact with all of these farmers as quickly as possible to resolve all of the outstanding issues. It is my ambition to finalise these matters as quickly as possible but we need some documentation from this remaining cohort. As I have said, more than 93% has been paid and we intend to make the balancing payment, the 15%, by the end of June. We would like to resolve these outstanding cases as quickly as possible and I assure the Senator that all of the resources that are required of my Department, both from an IT and administrative side, are being applied to that purpose.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank the Minister.