Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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120. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine based on applications under the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme examined to date, the number of applicants who will be approved for payments of up to €1,000, from €1,000 to €2,000, and so on, in intervals of €1,000 up to €7,000, by county; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26569/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Almost 27,000 GLAS applications submitted will now be assessed and approved in line with the priority environmental assets and pre-determined selection criteria. All applicants will be notified in writing of the outcome of their application and I anticipate contracts will commence in October and run until the end of 2020. Based on the total value of applications received, I expect that the average payment will be in the order of €5,000.

It is not possible at this early stage to provide the detailed information sought by the Deputy and this level of detail will only be available following the completion of all checks and the selection of successful applicants for approval into the scheme. However, the qualifying score built into the system for evaluating Tier 3 applicants, i.e. those without Priority Environmental Assets, is based on a reasonable expectation of what can be achieved at holding level, equivalent for example to 10 hectares of low input permanent pasture, 15 Bat Boxes and 6 Bird Boxes. This would generate the applicant a return of €3,365, and I would therefore expect most applications to achieve or exceed this level of return.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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121. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will confirm that, on average, the number of applicants applying under the green low-carbon agri-environmental scheme in respect of commonages is considerably less than two per commonage, even allowing for the fact that some farmers have shares in more than one commonage and that he recently stated that 4,000 scheme applicants with commonage covered nearly 2,700 commonages; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26570/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I am very pleased that over half of all commonages in the country are represented in the first tranche of GLAS applications. Further analysis is needed to determine exactly the average number of farmers per commonage in GLAS, as some farmers operate on several commonages.

What is clear is that there are commonage farmers who have not yet applied for the Scheme. Some of these are undoubtedly in AEOS and intend to see out their AEOS contracts, confident in the knowledge that they will receive priority access to GLAS when they do decide to join. Others may have waited in order to see if a commonage management plan is commenced on their particular commonage. This option was open to farmers, given that commonage management plans can be joined at a later date and that priority access remains open to these farmers.

I would expect additional applications from Commonage farmers under the second tranche of GLAS, which opens in the Autumn.