Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

33. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the consultation and discussion with farming groups regarding the GLAS scheme especially regarding 50% and 80% for the tiered participation of commonage shareholders in the scheme. [26132/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I announced details of the new GLAS (Green Low-carbon Agri-environment Scheme) on the 14 of January 2014 as part of a suite of proposed measures under the new Rural Development Programme. GLAS will provide significant funding to farmers who undertake environmental actions in line with national and EU environmental objectives. It will contribute to the overall public good and will build on the success of previous agri-environment schemes.

Stakeholder consultation has been a central element in the development of the new RDP, and has been ongoing for almost a year. In that time, a number of different formal and informal consultation processes involving the farming organisations have taken place. The most recently completed stakeholder consultation centred on the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). As part of this process I published a consultation document on the new Rural Development Programme, which sets out the range of proposed measures in considerable detail.

Since I first proposed priority access for commonage owners who could achieve 80% participation level in a collective, I have listened carefully to the concerns expressed by farmers about the difficulty of achieving that level of agreement. Having reviewed the position in the light of those concerns, I announced on 13 May 2014 that I was building in a second-tier access to the Scheme where a minimum of just 50%participation could be secured. I believe this will significantly ease the burden of securing collective agreements. Once the inputs from the final round of public consultation have been assessed, I will move to finalise the detail of the scheme. At that stage I envisage further discussions with the various farm bodies.