The submission to the EU Commission on reclassification resulted from recommendations made by the Disadvantaged Areas Appeals Panel. This submission was lodged with the Commission in October 1994 and the appeals panel's recommendations were approved without change in October 1995.
The following criteria for selection of areas in reclassification were agreed between the appeal panel, the farming organisations and the Department: the income of an area must not exceed 60 per cent of the national average income; the land quality must not exceed four on the land assessment scale of 0 to 9; and the area must form an homogenous block and be contiguous to an existing more severely handicapped area or if not contiguous, form an homogenous block of at least 15,000 hectares. It was also agreed that data gathered in a farm survey in 1989, which had been used for the fourth review, would again be used for the reclassification exercise.
It should be noted that while a member state can set the criteria by which areas are identified as suffering a higher degree of handicap than others, EU Commission approval is required before these areas can be reclassified. The Commission must be satisfied that these criteria accurately identify such areas and that the areas meet the criteria before they will approve requests for reclassification.
The Castlecomer Plateau is a non-contiguous "island" area, and the appeals panel examined each townland, building up a block which exceeded the 15,000 hectare minimum while satisfying the criteria. They stopped when they reached the point at which the addition of any more townlands would have caused one or more of the criteria to be exceeded.
All the townlands named above, with the exception of Smithstown, were omitted from the submission on reclassification because they exceeded the land quality limit of four. Smithstown was omitted because, although it satisfied the criteria, it was separated from the proposed reclassification boundary by townlands which did not satisfy the criteria.
Following the announcement of details of the newly reclassified areas, I stated that any individual or group who wanted an explanation for the omission of their area could contact my Department. I suggested this because I realised that some of those who had appealed would not require such explanations, while others had already sought and received this information. To contact everyone whose area had not been successful would have been both time consuming and would have resulted in a high level of unnecessary duplication.
