Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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114. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the total number of applications received by his Department to date under the green low-carbon agri-environmental scheme and the green low-carbon agri-environmental scheme+; the number that have actions chosen; the number of complete applications received in each case; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17052/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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To date, a total of 21,582 applications have been registered on the GLAS online system, of which 13,708 have selected actions. The facility to submit finalised applications will be activated shortly and applicants will then have until 22 May 2015 to submit their completed applications. Applications can only be identified as ‘complete’ once they have been submitted, so at this point in time I cannot provide a figure for that category. Applicants do not select distinct actions to qualify for GLAS Plus - the increased payments available under this measure are automatically applied where the annual cost for a farmer of addressing a combination of Tier 1 Priority Environmental Assets (PEAs) exceeds €5,000 per annum. These farmers move into the GLAS Plus category, where the ceiling for annual payment is €7,000. Farmers managing bird PEAs can qualify for GLAS Plus on the strength of their bird PEA alone, without the need for any other PEA, provided of course that they manage an area of habitat sufficient to draw the additional payment. The number of GLAS Plus applicants will only become apparent when applications are finalised and have been fully costed.