Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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261. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to set down the number of hectares in hen harrier special protection areas that are commonage land and the number under privately-owned agricultural land for which applications have been made in 2015. [42519/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is responsible in the first instance for the identification of areas important for the Hen Harrier sites, and these may include agricultural and non-agricultural land, as well as privately owned farmland and commonage.

However, the Hen Harrier action in GLAS only applies to privately-owned farmland and therefore this is the only category of land for which my Department maintains detailed records. In the first tranche of GLAS, applications to take the hen harrier action were made on a total area of 25,864 hectares of private land.

The first tranche of GLAS is now closed but we would encourage farmers with hen harrier habitat to apply to join the scheme under the second tranche, which is now open. All farmers with hen harrier habitat will receive priority access to GLAS as Tier One candidates.