Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 31 March 2015
156. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of farmers who have applied to date to join the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme; the closing date for applications to be accepted in 2015; his plans to extend this closing date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12715/15]
View answerThere is significant concern that the target set by the Minister of getting 30,000 farmers to join the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme this year will be impossible to achieve.
I note in today's Irish Independent that the Minister has extended the closing date already as he has realised his targets were ridiculous and the 30 April deadline was not achievable for 30,000 applications. This deadline has been extended to 22 May. Will he not consider extending that to 15 June as there is no physical way 30,000 applications can be made by 22 May?
There is actually but we will wait to see how it goes.
I acknowledge the importance of the role of agricultural advisers in GLAS, the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme. Their professional expertise and experience are vital to the preparation of reliable GLAS applications that fully comply with regulatory and scheme requirements. That is why I have made it mandatory for all GLAS applications to be submitted by an approved GLAS adviser.
The negotiations with the European Commission on the scheme's details were long and protracted, which is why the earliest date I could open it was 23 February 2015. The original deadline set for submission of applications was 30 April. Admittedly, this was tight but there was no real opportunity to extend this without impinging upon the deadline for direct payment applications generally, a deadline fixed for many years by regulation as 15 May.
However, I have been working closely with the European Commission to get this regulatory deadline extended and I am delighted we have achieved some flexibility on this front. While we do not yet have the Commission's proposal, it is my intention to extend the GLAS deadline to 22 May, if possible, which will provide significantly more time to submit applications for this first tranche of GLAS.
To date, I am pleased a total of 9,119 applications have been created on the GLAS online application system. We are almost at the 10,000 mark and there is still quite some time to go. It is possible to push the basic payment and GLAS deadline back to the middle of June but there would be consequences to that. I am determined to get our basic payments out to farmers at the earliest possible date in mid-October. If we push the applications dates back, then the processing becomes much more difficult with the time available. I am also anxious that there would be at least a week separation between when the GLAS deadline and the basic payment closes. We do not want them all coming in on the same deadline with farmers who leave it to the last minute trying to get all their basic payment and GLAS applications in on the same day. We do not want our backs up against the wall but to have a little bit of breathing space, which is why it is the end of May for the basic payment scheme and a week earlier, 22 May, for GLAS applications. There is some flexibility with these dates but I would like us to achieve our deadlines by these dates too.
Will the Minister confirm that the 9,119 refers to the number who have initiated a GLAS application but in no way reflects the number who have a completed application? One has to register at the beginning of the process. Will the Minister tell me how many completed applications there are for GLAS?
Last week, the Minister said there were 477 accredited GLAS planners. As there is much work in these plans, these planners will probably produce 40 plans each, a plan per working day. This only gives 20,000 plans by the current deadline. To my knowledge, there are only 9,000 completed plans so far. Will the Minister accept there is no way he will have 30,000 completed plans by 22 May? Is there a legal possibility under the regulation to have a later closing date for GLAS than for the basic payment?
I asked the same question but my understanding is one cannot have a later date. As one is linked to the other, the GLAS application has to be finalised first and then the basic payment after that. We could push them back into June but that then has consequences for registration.
I would expect planners to get far more than one application per day. The fact that an average of about 700 applications are being received per day is proof of that for starters. Effectively, there are two months left. Many planners would have prepared in advance. They knew what was coming, had a pretty good idea what GLAS was going to look like and have already done an awful lot of work. They have put their applications up on the system and are waiting to simply submit. There are over 9,000 applications ready for submission, all the work having been done to date. We are making good progress. I am not saying everything is perfect, because it is not. We are looking for people to make constructive criticisms of the application process so that we can keep improving it as it goes along. If anybody had suggested that by this point in time we would have nearly 10,000 applications ready for submission, most people would have been pleasantly surprised. That is where we are. We are making good progress and will continue to monitor it tightly as time goes on.
I would not have been surprised that there were 10,000 registrations on the system. The Minister studiously avoided telling me how many of those are completed applications or how many have just been initiated. I would have expected a big flush in the beginning because of people having done the preliminary work. Could the Minister send me the figure regarding the number of farmers who have submitted a completed final application?
In a reply last week, the Minister told me that there was €1.4 billion for agri-environment schemes under the present CAP, including transitional payments. He might tell me how much of that €1.4 billion relates to the GLAS scheme as opposed to transitional payments.
In the event that there are fewer than 30,000 applications, will the Minister consider approving the applications and letting them become operational as they are processed rather than waiting for everybody to be processed before they are all let go on the same day? The big advantage of that is that people would get payments far earlier and would get a significantly bigger payment this year than if they are all held back until the last application is processed.
I am not sure how the Deputy proposes I prioritise them.
If there are fewer than 30,000, the Minister will not need to prioritise-----
Many farmers in the Deputy's area will be finalising commonage GLAS plans after they have applied and after the deadline. They might be finalising those plans into July. Is the Deputy suggesting that we discriminate against those people in terms of the opening date? I hope he not suggesting this. The point I am making is that we will get this system approved as soon as we can but we will not discriminate against anybody in the process and we will be as fair as we can. When GLAS is fully up and running it will cover around 50,000 farmers and we will be spending about €260 million per year on them. This is a big environmental scheme. This year we have estimated about €20 million, because we know we are not going to be accepting people approved into GLAS until about September, so farmers will only be getting payments for the last few months of the year.
How much of the €1.4 billion relates to GLAS?
The Deputy can do the numbers.
Deputies Martin Ferris and Seán Kyne are not present, so I now call Deputy Naughten.
