Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 24 February 2021
1098. Deputy Carol Nolan asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will consider the proposal by a group (details supplied) that a new rural environment protection scheme be index linked to 1994, the year of the original scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10251/21]
View answerNegotiations regarding the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the associated draft regulations are ongoing. While progress has been made, there are decisions on a number of key issues still to be made, including in relation to the proposed CAP Strategic Plan. The proposed new Green Architecture which encompasses enhanced conditionality, eco-schemes and agri-environment climate measures needs to be considered in this regard.
The Green Low Carbon Agri-Environment Scheme (GLAS) was the national agri-environment climate measure under the Rural Development Programme to the end of 2020. To ensure that environmental benefits achieved to date are maintained and that farmers continue to receive support, GLAS 1 and 2 participants with contracts due to expire at end 2020 were offered the option of extending their contracts for a further year. The vast majority opted to do so.
As regards the successor scheme to GLAS, it is proposed that a new agri-environment climate scheme will be included in Ireland’s new CAP Strategic Plan.
Funding has also been made available for an agri-environment pilot project. It is proposed to do this as a results-based project in order to align it with the principles of the next CAP. The pilot will trial the results-based model on participating farms and will test the feasibility of up-scaling the model as part of the next national scheme. Results-based agri-environment payment schemes reward farmers for committed environmental effort by linking payments to the quality of environmental outcomes delivered. I do not expect many payments will be determined by index linking to 1994.
To inform the development of the project, a public consultation was recently launched and will remain open until 26th February. Final decisions on the structure and content of the pilot will be made after the public consultation process. A summary overview document and the online consultation survey are available at gov.ie - Public Consultation on Proposed Agri-Environment Results Based Pilot Project (www.gov.ie).
