Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 25 October 2016
519. Deputy Jackie Cahill asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if any extra funding has been made available to the special areas of conservation, SACs, to compensate for the restrictions imposed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31878/16]
View answerUnder the various Locally-Led initiatives of my Department, funding will be available to support a variety of farmer-led pilot projects, many of which will focus on tackling environmental challenges in designated areas. For example, there will be two new projects looking at different ways of improving habitat and conservation of the Hen Harrier and the Freshwater Pearl Mussel and these will specifically target farmers in the relevant designated areas. Considerable funding has been set aside for this over the course of the RDP period. There is also a separate fund for bottom-up projects, drawn from open competitive calls, and again I would expect that many of these will focus on farmer-led initiatives in designated areas. Finally, I should draw attention to the Burren Programme, which will allow for expansion of the scheme to include all eligible farmers in the Burren region and which focuses specifically on the better management of Annex 1 habitats.
From a GLAS perspective Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas are given tier 1 priority when selecting applicants under the Green Low-carbon Agri-environment Scheme (GLAS) operated by my Department. The scheme provides significant funding to farmers with designated lands.
Finally under the provisions of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), farmers need to declare an eligible hectare for each payment entitlement held in order to benefit from payment. The hectares declared must be eligible and must have an agricultural activity carried out on them. Where an officially approved environmental management plan involving Special Areas of Conservation or Special Protection Areas requires certain management practices to be conducted on agricultural areas, such management practices will take precedence in determining the level of agricultural activity to be conducted on agricultural areas declared for payment. Article 32(2)(b)(i) of Regulation (EU) 1307/2013 provides that an eligible hectare for BPS purposes includes any area which gave a right to payments in 2008 under the single payment scheme and which no longer complies with the definition of 'eligible hectare' as a result of the implementation of Directive 92/43/EEC, Directive 2000/60/EC and Directive 2009/147/EC where the following conditions are met:
(1) The land must have been claimed under the 2008 Single Payment Scheme;
(2) The land must have been eligible for payment under the 2008 Single Payment Scheme;
(3) Any increase in the ineligible area should be directly linked to the management requirements for the habitat.
