Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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272. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the number of persons that participated in the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, farm plan scheme; and the funding allocated and expended on the programme in each of the years 2010 to 2016, in tabular form. [41404/17]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The National Parks and Wildlife Service of my Department has operated a farm plan scheme since 2006, which has the primary objectives of testing, on a relatively small scale, bespoke measures for nature conservation on farmland. The scheme has incentivised farmers, in particular instances, to go above and beyond their statutory requirements. To date over 650 NPWS Farm Plans were approved and these plans have been instrumental in designing national agri-environment schemes which have been taken forward on a larger scale under the Rural Development Programme 2014-2020.

The Farm Plan Scheme was greatly scaled back in 2010 during the financial crisis and now is largely replaced by GLAS.

The following table presents the number of contractual commitments with farmers in the years 2010 to 2016 inclusive. In addition, the budget allocated in each of these years to payment to farmers, to farm planners, for the delivery of farm audits and associated payments is also presented. Finally the actual expenditure on payments to farmers only is presented for the years in question.

There are currently 39 landowners operating under the Farm Plan Scheme in 2017.