Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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640. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if farmers who joined GLAS in 2015 and 2016 will be paid their 85% payment under GLAS for commonages in December 2016, even if farmers have not signed up to the interim GLAS plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36896/16]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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All commonage shareholders are required to sign an Interim Commonage Management Plan (CMP) for each of their commonages as a condition of payment for 2016. My Department put in place a process to provide for the submission of interim Commonage Management Plans and I am pleased that this has been well received and responded to by both advisors and commonage shareholders. The interim process requires the assigned GLAS commonage advisor to complete a 2016 interim CMP for each of the commonages assigned to them and required signatures of each GLAS approved participant who is a shareholder on each of the commonages. 

The interim CMP clearly stated that failure by the farmer to sign would result in no GLAS payment issuing.

There are a number of commonages for which the assignment of an advisor is under review and my Department is currently putting in place a procedure which will facilitate the processing of 2016 GLAS payment for shareholders on these commonages to take palce at the same time as all other GLAS 1 and GLAS 2 participants.