Written answers

Thursday, 15 October 2009

Department of Agriculture and Food

Departmental Expenditure

Photo of Máire HoctorMáire Hoctor (Tipperary North, Fianna Fail)
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Question 40: To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food his spending proposals for the use of the unspent single payment scheme funds, announced in the context of a revised rural development programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36065/09]

Photo of Brendan SmithBrendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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Under the agreement reached in November 2008 on the Health Check of the CAP, I secured approval to use previously inaccessible unspent Single Payment Scheme funds to address, among other things, specific disadvantages affecting certain sectors in economically vulnerable or environmentally sensitive areas. Member states may also provide support to farmers for specific agricultural activities providing agri-environmental benefits.

Resulting from this agreement Ireland gained access to in the region of €25 million in additional funding for each of the next three years 2010, 2011 and 2012 for these targeted measures. In considering how these moneys might be best spent my objective was to achieve the most effective and efficient outcome for Irish agriculture. With this in mind and having consulted widely with all relevant stakeholders including the farming organisations and having regard to the provisions of the regulations, I decided to allocate the available funds as follows: €18 million each year for the next three years on a grassland scheme to support incomes in the sheep sector, €6 million each year for the next three years on a grassland dairy efficiency programme aimed at encouraging a significant improvement in efficiencies on dairy farms, and €1 million for each of the three years 2010, 2011 and 2012 to support high environmental value farming, with tourism spin-off, in the Burren, County Clare, continuing and mainstreaming the pilot scheme operated by the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

In addition to this agreement I successfully negotiated for the use of the national reserve element of these funds from 2009. In this regard I have already announced that approximately €7 million will be paid to hill sheep farmers as a once off payment in the form of an uplands sheep payment, benefiting approximately 12,500 hill sheep farmers.

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