Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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430. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of applications received for the hen harrier scheme by county; the number of approved applications; the number of farmers that have withdrawn from the scheme; the number of approved applicants that have received the 2018 payment; and the number of approved applicants that have not received the 2018 payment by county. [53620/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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The Hen Harrier scheme is operationally independent of my Department and is run by a Hen Harrier Project team. The info below is sourced from the Project Team. A total of 1,845 applications were received by the Hen Harrier Project team and of these 1,632 were deemed to be valid applications. The breakdown per county of valid applications is shown below.

Number of valid applications for the Hen Harrier Scheme

There were 695 contracts offered for the 2018 breeding season and 629 of those offers were accepted. Payments have now been prepared for 425 of those. See the table below.

Number of contracted participants paid for 2018 breeding season

The Hen Harrier Programme is still open and offers for the 2019 season will commence in January 2019. No withdrawals from the programme have taken place.