Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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91. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the reason he continues to persist in demanding the collective agreement requirement for participation of commonage farmers in GLAS; if he will confirm that this requirement is not a requirement of the EU but of his Department; if his attention has been drawn to the impracticality of such a requirement; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48640/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Firstly I would like to point out that my priority is to put in place requirements for commonages that will deliver real and measureable environmental benefits and will fit within the framework of the Rural Development Regulations, which require that farmers are only paid for actions which exceed the baseline for the Basic Payment Scheme. At recent meetings with the Commission it was made clear that it is incumbent on Member States to ensure that payments are above the baseline and that clear evidence of same must be shown in order to secure approval for the Rural Development Programme. There has been extensive consultation with the stakeholders concerned and I am well aware of the issues arising. There is general agreement amongst all that the key to managing these valuable habitats is a single Commonage Management Plan (CMP), covering all participating GLAS shareholders, and hill farmers have no difficulty with this. I am aware of the concerns raised by hill farmers in this regard.

I am very confident that we can deliver a successful implementation strategy for these commonages and I intend to contact the various representatives in the very near future to outline what I believe is achievable. My focus now is to secure Commission approval to the Rural Development Programme at the earliest possible date so that I can open GLAS to applications, and agreement by all stakeholders on the way forward in terms of commonages is crucial in this regard.