When the first REP scheme closed to new entrants at the end of 1999, there were some 45,500 active participants. Some comments on the level of participation in the new scheme seem to be based on the mistaken assumption that the figure of 45,500 at the end of 1999 formed a base from which REPS should continue to grow. In reality, however, farmers join REPS for a five-year term and over 27,000 farmers have come to the end of their contracts since December 1999. Some 18,000 farmers are still in the first scheme.
Since the new REP scheme was launched in November 2000, my Department has already received almost 19,000 applications and most of these are already in payment. I understand that another 7,000 applications are at the planning stage and have not yet reached my Department. Last year, the first full year of the new scheme, saw the highest number of applications ever received and processed in any year since REPS was first launched in 1994. Applications received by the end of this year are expected to overtake that record level again.
Of the farmers in the first REPS who came to the end of their contracts since 1999, the information available to me indicates that between 80% and 85% nationally have already applied for the new scheme or are in the course of applying for it. Since the new REPS, though identical in most respects to the first one, is legally a separate measure, farmers who participated in the first scheme and wish to continue in REPS must submit a new REPS plan and a new application. This work has to be done by planners approved by my Department, of which there are 750, of whom only 635 have had plans approved under the new scheme to date. Consequently, the level of demand for the new scheme is giving rise to backlogs at the planning stage.
I am encouraged by the level of uptake for the new scheme, which also includes a proportion of farmers who were not in the first one. There are a number of possible reasons that a comparatively small proportion of the farmers who participated in the first REPS are not applying for the new one. Many, because of age or other considerations, will not want to take on a further five-year undertaking. Others have undischarged financial liabilities from the first scheme and will be eligible to rejoin once they have discharged these. A number will be deterred by the cost of having plans prepared, while others will have decided on economic and other grounds to revert to more intensive farming methods than REPS will allow.