Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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244. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the effect on a commonage if one of the shareholders does not abide by the rules and restrictions of the SAC; and if the GLAS payments for the other persons (details supplied) will be affected if they are doing things correctly and abiding by the rules of the SAC. [6310/17]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) are the competent authority for the designation of and setting of compliance criteria for SAC and SPA areas.  Compliance with these requirements is an element of the Cross Compliance requirements and all applicants under the various EU funded area-based schemes, e.g. BPS, ANC, GLAS, must comply with them. Under EU regulations governing these schemes my Department is obliged to undertake inspections on an annual basis to check compliance with the requirements.  Where is it determined, as part of a Department inspection process, that an applicant is non-compliant with such requirements, a penalty may be applied. A penalty will apply where the non-compliance determined is found to be directly attributable to the beneficiary who submitted the scheme application. In the case of commonages a penalty would be applied to all of the shareholders where the non-compliance determined can be directly attributed to each of the shareholders.

In addition, the NPWS may cross report cases of non-compliance to my Department for appropriate attention and application of penalties, on the basis set out above.