My apologies for the confusion. There was certainly no intention to keep information from anybody, in case that is the feeling at the meeting. This was a Commission document we received in October. Since then there has been an ongoing toing and froing. We have been sending teams to Brussels virtually every week. Fintan O'Brien has been leading that effort. We can talk about the 266 questions as if that is the only thing under discussion if the committee wishes, but it totally misses the point in terms of where the process is right now and how we can get this over the line so we can start opening schemes. That has been my focus.
By all means, if the committee wants me or some of the officials to go through each of the 266 questions and the answers we sent to all of them, we can do that. However, that will take a long time and members will find that most of those are issues that are long since dealt with. The vast majority of them are technical issues; they are clarifications for the Commission, which has a team of people looking at all of the RDP plans in the same way as they are looking at the Irish plan. In fact, Ireland was one of the countries that had the fewest number of questions. Finland was the only country that had fewer questions than Ireland. Another group, comprising Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, England, the Czech Republic and Scotland, received observations more or less at the same time.
I have been on the other side of this discussion, seeking information as a committee member and a proper, in-depth conversation with the Minister to try to get under the skin of things. It is frustrating if one does not have information but I assure members that it was not due to any strategy by us. The Commission made it clear that this was its document and if we were to release it to anybody, it wanted to be part of that decision making process. The Commission specifically said that to us before Christmas.
I said I would release the questions when I could. I understand An Taisce then received the questions and they were published on the website of another NGO. Some members will have seen the questions, but the point is that many of them are no longer relevant. I will make my statement and will make myself available in the next few days, if I can and my diary allows, if that would be helpful, to clarify some of the other issues.
I thank the committee for the invitation to address it today on the approval process for the new rural development programme spanning 2014 to 2020. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to fulfil the commitment I made in the Dáil last December to apprise the committee on the progress being made by my Department in securing agreement with the European Commission on the approval of the draft RDP.
I must emphasise at the outset that RDP approval is a formal legal process and has been the highest priority for my Department since it submitted the draft programme last July. The proposed measures contained in the draft RDP have been the subject of detailed, lengthy and rigorous scrutiny by the Commission. The approval process is ongoing and my Department is currently engaged in a series of ongoing bilateral meetings with Commission officials.
The financial allocation for the new programme will total some €4 billion in EU and national funding over its lifetime. By any standard, this level of investment is a strong statement of the Government's commitment to developing the potential of the rural economy generally and the farming sector in particular. Programme expenditure will be a key element in enhancing the competitiveness of the agrifood sector, achieving more sustainable management of natural resources and ensuring a more balanced development of rural areas in the line with the overall CAP objectives.
The proposed measures in the new programme were framed in light of the experience of the previous programme and were developed over 18 months following an extensive stakeholder consultation exercise, a number of preparatory analyses and an independent ex ante evaluation. The draft RDP includes GLAS, a substantial new agri-environment scheme worth €1.4 billion over the programme period, and a number of other targeted environmental measures.
It has a continued strong support for areas of natural constraint, formerly known as disadvantaged areas, amounting to some €195 million per year. It also includes significant support for on-farm capital investment, with a total of €395 million over the lifetime of the RDP, a range of knowledge transfer measures across various sectors with which members will be familiar, support for collaborative farming, targeted support for the beef sector by means of an innovative beef data and genomics programme and support for wider rural development issues via the provision of €250 million in funding for the continuation of the Leader programme.
Following the submission of Ireland's RDP, the European Commission provided its formal observations on the draft on 20 October. I understand the members of the committee have been provided with the details of those observations. The receipt of these formal observations in effect opened a formal process of bilateral discussion with the Commission on the draft RDP.
Meetings between officials in my Department and the Commission services are taking place on an almost weekly basis, but it is difficult to be definitive about the likely duration of these discussions, given the demands on Commission resources and the need for the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development to co-ordinate with several other Directorates-General that have commented on the draft RDP. This is not just about negotiating with the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development. It also involves DG-CLIMA and the environment DG, in particular regarding measures like GLAS, where environment, climate and agriculture all feel the need to have an input. It is complex and involves back-and-forth negotiations.
The protracted nature of the approval process is also linked to the Commission's workload in examining 188 RDPs in accordance with stringent legal requirements on the justification for proposed measures and the need for sound financial management of public resources.
While all programmes are subject to the same approval procedures, the timescale for approval will obviously vary depending on the complexity, scale and scope of individual programmes.
Following agreement on a member state's national or regional programme, a draft RDP must go through a formal adoption process in the Commission. The Commissioner, Mr. Phil Hogan has, however, recently announced that the Commission will provide letters of comfort to member states whose rural development programmes have been agreed with the Commission in principle but which are awaiting the full formal and legal adoption of the programme. This development should facilitate early implementation of RDP schemes and supports across member states. Given the need for continuity in relation to RDP schemes between programming periods, my overriding goal now is to expedite the approval process.
In terms of the content of the observations received from the Commission, a total of 266 observations were received, incorporating a range of technical and legal policy issues. The level of feedback from the Commission is not out of line with the observations received by other member states, as I pointed out earlier. In fact, in many cases, the number of observations received on our draft RDP was significantly less than other member states. It is also important to note that the feedback received, and the follow-up discussions, incorporate the views of all the relevant directors general in the Commission, and not just those of the Directorate for Agriculture and Rural Development.
A significant element of the exchange of information to date with the Commission has been on some of the technical and legal issues raised in their observations. In many cases these have been easily addressed and can be rectified in the new draft of the RDP. For instance, in a number of the cases, the Commission has highlighted the need to reference particular EU regulations or to update particular pieces of data provided in response by my Department. Those amendments have already been made. Similarly, the Commission has raised a number of queries for further background and explanatory information. For example, the Commission has requested explanatory material on many of the background chapters which are included in the RDP, such as the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, SWOT, and needs analyses, and this material has been forwarded to the Commission.
As the flagship scheme within the RDP, much of the bilateral discussions have focused on the GLAS scheme. The bilateral discussions have covered in detail the targeted structure of the scheme and the Commission has gone through all the individual actions in the scheme to examine the underlying logic and costings and the need for all actions to go above the baseline. In other words, they have to add something to what is already the requirement under Pillar 1 payments.
These discussions have been very productive and the Commission is broadly supportive of the approach being taken. There are some issues which are still under discussion, such as the control and prioritisation of expenditure, including the issue of maximum payments, and the approach to controlling low-input actions - in other words, limitations on fertiliser inputs and so on, in terms of putting a value on those actions. However, very real progress has been made in recent weeks. I want to thank my team for the work they have been doing on this. They have gone way beyond what would normally be asked of them in terms of workload.
The proposed beef data and genomics programme has also been the subject of intensive discussions - mainly because this scheme is new and they need to get their heads around it. All three DGs need to do that. This scheme is included in the RDP as a climate change measure and the bona fides of the climate change benefits arising from the scheme have been the subject of rigorous scrutiny. At this stage, we are happy that the Commission accepts the basis for the scheme. Discussions are now at an advanced stage on the more technical aspects of the scheme's implementation.
Intensive negotiations with the Commission are ongoing and my Department has provided a range of requested information and clarifications to the Commission on its observations and queries.
Further meetings to clarify outstanding issues are scheduled to take place in the coming weeks. The successful completion of this approval process is very much my priority in order to ensure that the range of schemes contained in the draft rural development programme can be rolled out to underpin development and growth across rural areas.
The committee will probably ask me for a timescale in terms of when we might be able to get this job done. I would certainly be hopeful that by the middle of next month we will be in a position to at least make progress on the opening of GLAS, with a view to trying to open other schemes, probably in the middle of March. We are pushing hard to get agreement in principle on the detail of the key schemes and to get a letter of comfort, as soon as is practical and is legally possible, from the Commission, at which the Commission is also looking. As late as yesterday, I spoke to the Commissioner, Mr. Hogan, on this issue. I can assure the committee we will continue to push it as hard as we can.
