Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 30 November 2016
3. Deputy Charlie McConalogue asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the status of the total participation levels and expected payment levels for farmers under the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme; if all allocated funds will be spent on the programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37785/16]
View answerMy question asks the Minister to give the latest update on total participation levels and expected payment levels for farmers under the green, low-carbon, agri-environment scheme, GLAS. It also asks whether the Minister expects the allocated funds to be spent in full and, if not, if he will indicate what any underspend will be directed towards?
The first two tranches of GLAS resulted in almost 38,000 farmers being approved into the scheme in its first year of implementation. This represents an unprecedented level of participation in the first year of an agri-environment scheme in Ireland. This scheme is providing support to Irish farmers to deliver environmental benefits and public goods which will enhance Ireland's agriculture sustainability credentials into the future.
This scheme is playing a critical role in enhancing Ireland's efforts to deliver sustainable agricultural production. The scheme provides support to Irish farmers aimed at enhancement of biodiversity, water quality and mitigation of future impacts of climate change while allowing Irish farmers to improve their agricultural productivity and practices in a sustainable manner. It is critical that we protect the Irish countryside for the benefit of all, and GLAS provides support to Irish producers to do this while enhancing their ability to deliver sustainable food production, which is making a critical contribution to growth in the Irish economy.
In launching the third tranche of GLAS, I was fully aware of the need to maximise participation in the scheme, in particular to maximise the participation of farmers with the most important environmental assets and farmers who can deliver the actions with greatest impact environmentally. Given the interest in the scheme to date, I am confident that the third tranche will result in participation levels meeting expectations and result in all the funding provided for in Ireland's Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 being used. It is clear given the interest in the third tranche to date that the overall target participation level for the scheme of at least 50,000 farmers can be met. This will mean that by 2017, 50,000 farmers will be fully participating in GLAS, delivering benefits which will enhance the Irish environment for many years to come.
Selection into the scheme will depend on the level of applications received and the available funding, so I would again urge farmers, in consultation with their advisers, to select the most environmentally impactful actions on their applications as this will increase their chances of selection into the scheme. The same criteria for priority access to the scheme as applied in previous tranches will be applied to GLAS 3.
I reiterate that given the projected level of participation in the scheme, all available European funds and matching funds over the rural development plan programming period will be fully utilised.
My question also asked the Minister to indicate the average projected payment levels but he did not refer to those in his response. Those are important in terms of whether the total spend, as projected, will be met. I have a concern about that, and the figures show that we are on course for GLAS to have a significant underspend between now and the end of the rural development programme in 2020.
The Minister, as well as his predecessor, and his Department have been too slow in getting the scheme up and running. As indicated in my first priority question, the vast majority of farmers who have applied for GLAS have not had a full year's payment yet, despite the fact the CAP programme has been up and running for more than two years at this stage.
My information from a reply to a previous parliamentary question is that the average spend was €4,600. If that were to continue and if the number of participants was to reach 50,000 capacity, there would be at least a €20 million overspend for the remainder of the scheme on top of the underspend on it so far. I want the Minister to clarify the average spend. Will the €1.45 billion committed to by the previous Minister, Deputy Coveney, be spent in full by the end of 2020, and if not, on what will the money be spent?
I have already indicated ad nauseam in the Chamber that the record of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on previous rural development programmes and on this one is to spend every penny that has been allocated. As I said in reply to the Deputy's first parliamentary question, the schemes do not lend themselves to 1 January to 31 December absolutist deadlines. That is why we are still paying some rural environment protection scheme, REPS, and agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, payments because they spill over. The proof of that is that farmers are in the process of applying for inclusion under GLAS 3 and their five-year entitlement will run beyond 2020.
The Deputy is correct, and he has asked this question again, that the average payments under GLAS 1 and GLAS 2 is €4,600. The scheme is currently open for new applicants. The ambition is to reach 50,000 new applicants and that will ensure the commitment to spend under the RDP GLAS will be met.
Let me be clear on this, the Minister and his predecessor have breached their commitment to farmers to spend €1.45 billion on GLAS by the end of 2020. That is what the Minister committed to and that is what he is backing away from. The net outcome of that is that farmers and farm families will not benefit from that income because it will not be spent by 2020 and will be kicked out until after that. The reason for that is that the Minister was slow in getting the GLAS off the ground and also, because the requirements to participate in it are very restrictive, the average payment is less than what was projected. The result is that farm families are not getting what the Minister committed to. If there is to be an underspend in GLAS by the end of 2020, which clearly there will be, I remind the Minister that his Government committed to spending €1.45 billion on this programme by the end of 2020, not later than that. My position is that this has to be spent within this rural development programme. How much of that funding will not be spent by the end of the programme? I ask the Minister for an absolute commitment that if that funding is not spent by then, it will be allocated to RDP schemes within that timeframe?
I ask the Deputy, in the context of his question, to reflect on why it is that we are paying REPS and AEOS payments now.
Why is the Minister not paying GLAS payments? He is not paying them because he was too slow to get the scheme up and running.
That is the way it works. The Deputy should know that.
The Deputy's suggestion, with which I totally disagree, is that new entrants to the GLAS now would only get three years payment.
No. It is certainly not.
We are committed to paying them for five years. The Deputy has to accept that once the RDP funding was secured, we had to submit a rural development plan to Brussels and it had to approve it. Once we got approval, we had to invite applications and payments GLAS payments began in late 2015. Then it was opened up to new applicants. The number that will ultimately benefit from this is 50,000. However, this will not fall neatly into the boxes that the Deputy seems to be dictating and it has never done so, nor has it ever done so in REPS and AEOS. The Deputy's suggestion would mean that new applicants to the scheme now would have only three years' entitlements. That is surely unfair.
