Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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158. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if there is a proposal to consider scrub land as eligible land for the purposes of the single farm payment; the circumstances in which this type of land can be considered eligible; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28860/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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There is no proposal to consider scrub land as eligible land for the purposes of the Single Payment Scheme. Under the Terms & Conditions of the Direct Aid Schemes, which includes the Single Payment Scheme, farmers are obliged to declare only eligible land when making their applications. In this context, an “eligible hectare” is land that is used for an agricultural activity and includes land used to grow cereals, oilseeds, short rotation coppice, miscanthus sinensis, protein crops, sugar beet, maize, fodder beet, turnips, mangolds, kale, vegetables, potatoes and grass for silage/hay/grazing. In addition, REPS areas, such as newly created habitats under option 4a of REPS 3 and REPS 4, and areas under linnet and riparian zones, are also eligible. The areas declared are then recorded on my Department’s Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), which currently contains the details of some 900,000 individual land parcels.

The Deputy will be aware that, following consultation with the EU Commission, as part of the normal accounting process, my Department was requested to undertake a complete review of the LPIS database. This has resulted in the necessity to adjust parcels of a significant number of applicants, where it was established that some ineligible features had been included. Subsequent to this exercise, a review by Commission officials prompted the proposed substantial financial correction, which my Department is currently vigorously contesting. In this context, it will be appreciated that the designation of scrub land as eligible land, for the purposes of the Direct Aid Schemes concerned, is not possible under the provisions of the governing EU Regulations.