Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Both GLAS and AEOS provide valuable support to farmers to deliver environmental benefits and public goods which will enhance Ireland's sustainability credentials into the future. They provide support to Irish farmers aimed at enhancing biodiversity, water quality and the mitigation of the future impacts of climate change while allowing Irish farmers to improve their agricultural practices.

The GLAS scheme is the latest agri-environment scheme available to farmers. It forms part of Ireland’s Rural Development Plan 2014-2020.  To date in excess of 50,000 farmers have had applications approved into the Scheme under three different tranches over a fourteen month period.  The approval of these farmers into the Scheme has been achieved a year ahead of the original target set when the Scheme was launched.

Over 95% of cases in Cork have been paid and currently the applications of 136 farmers continue to be processed with payment issuing as cases are cleared.  The Department has contacted the applicants where further information to support their application is needed and we are awaiting a reply to allow the payment processing to be finalised.  The Department is continuing to review cases on an on-going basis and as they are cleared they are processed for payment.

Concerning AEOS the position is that all but 33 farmers in County Cork have been paid and payments issue as files are cleared.  As 2016 is the final scheme-year of payment under AEOS 2, re-checks on payments made for all scheme years must be completed before final payment can be processed. This process is on-going and payments are issued on a weekly basis as cases are finalised.