Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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245. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the reason his Department introduced a 2014 rule application for commonages to qualify for GLAS while lowland or hill private lands are treated differently; and his views on whether it is another attack on hill commonage farmers. [38993/16]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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My Department revised commonage eligibility requirements for GLAS 3 applications from those which applied for GLAS 1 and GLAS 2 and issued a circular to all advisors and also published the circular on the Department’s website.  This update states that for GLAS 3 commonage land declared for the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) in 2015 whether declared in previous years or not is eligible.

In addition new entrants to farming in 2016 who declared commonage in their first BPS application in 2016 will also qualify.  Farmers with commonage receive priority access to the GLAS Scheme.

Farmers with privately owned hill or lowland are not automatically afforded priority access to the scheme unless they have a Priority Environmental Asset (PEA) on their holding.