Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour)
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483. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the reason for the delay in paying the Burren life scheme which was due to be paid out in mid March following a visit from officials of his Department on 3 March 2014 to a person (details supplied) in County Clare; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16078/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department has commenced payments for actions undertaken by farmers participating in the 2013 Burren Farming forConservation Programme (BFCP). The legal deadline, under the governing EU Regulations for making these payments is the end of June 2014. Since actions undertaken by the BFCP participants continued throughout the entire year 2013, it was not possible to carry out the required eligibility inspections, which must be carried out prior to payment, until 2014. The EU Regulations also provide that all of the eligibility inspections must be completed before payments can commence, this is now the case and payments have started to issue.

The payments for 2013 totalling €986,000, support high environmental value farming in the Burren, whichis one of Ireland’s outstandinglandscapes and is known worldwide. These payments will bring the allocation to participating famers by my Department over the four years of the Programme to over €3.8 million. Payments under this measure will remain in place in respect of the 2014 scheme-year.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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484. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his views on correspondence (details supplied) regarding grassland sheep payment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16081/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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In developing the shape of the new system of Direct Payments in Ireland, I have been very conscious of the needs of sheep farmers, in particular those who farm on hill and commonage land. In general sheep farmers hold low value entitlements under the current Single Payment Scheme and will benefit significantly from the model of convergence that is to be applied in Ireland where those with a low Initial Unit Value will see the value of their entitlements increase over the period of the scheme.

The Grassland Sheep Scheme is based on Article 68 of the current EU Regulation 73/2009 which governs direct payments in the form of the Single Payment Scheme. As of the 1 January 2015 that Regulation is superseded by EU Regulation 1307/2013 and consequently there is no longer any legal basis for the continuation of the Grassland Sheep Scheme in its present form.

When determining the Initial Unit Value of a farmer’s entitlements under the Basic Payment Scheme in 2015, Regulation 1307/2009 gives Member States the option to take into account any payment the farmer received in 2014 under Article 68 schemes such as the Grassland Sheep Scheme. This option is only available where the Member State is not applying voluntary coupled support to the sector concerned under the new CAP.

I have decided to apply this provision in Ireland as a means of safeguarding the value of the payments received under the Grassland Sheep Scheme for those farmers concerned. The Grassland Sheep Scheme is the only Article 68 scheme that is being incorporated into the calculation of entitlements under the new Basic Payment Scheme. If such incorporation does not take place the value of such payments would simply remain in the national fund and would be redistributed generally among all farmers who establish entitlements.

The incorporation of the Grassland Sheep Scheme payment into the calculation of a farmer’s Initial Unit Value in 2015 will obviously result in a higher entitlement value for the farmers concerned from the start of the Scheme rather than relying solely on the gradual process of convergence to increase the unit value over the five year period up to 2019.