Vol. 521 No. 6
42 Cecilia Keaveney asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development when the new REP scheme will be introduced; the likely changes from the current scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17674/00]
Ireland's CAP rural development plan for the period 2000-06 was submitted to the European Commission at the end of December last. This plan covers REPS along with early retirement, compensatory allowances and forestry.
Negotiations with the Commission are taking place on the plan as a whole, and the entire plan will have to be approved before any of the four individual measures can commence. These negotiations are now in their final stage. However once they are complete, there is a standard formal procedure for approval of all plans that has to take place and by its nature this exercise involves a considerable amount of detail and documentation. It is my objective to ensure that approval is forthcoming in the shortest possible time but it is too early at this stage to give any concrete dates for the likely commencement of the new REP scheme.
The proposed new REP scheme is closely modelled on the existing scheme, in accordance with the recommendation in the evaluation report furnished to the European Commission in July 1999. Some increase in the basic rate of payment is proposed where smaller farms are involved. I am also seeking the Commission's agreement to arrangements which would allow farmers with a small area of lands in an environmentally sensitive target area to get REPS payments for those lands, without having to put their non-target lands in REPS. The objective of this proposal is to maximise the area of environmentally sensitive land farmed to the REPS specification. Some smaller changes to certain supplementary measures are also envisaged.
