Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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168. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if there will be further consultation with farming organisations on the details of the qualifying criteria for the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS; if there is scope for elements of the scheme to be altered to benefit farmers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27719/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I announced details of the new GLAS (Green Low-carbon Agri-environment Scheme) on 14 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. 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.