Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 8 May 2014
8. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the date of the announcement of the agri-environment option scheme, AEOS; the date for the closure of receipt of applications for this scheme; the amount paid to farmers to date under AEOS 3; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20341/14]
Amharc ar fhreagraFrom the time of the agri-environment option scheme, AEOS, 3 scheme was announced until first payment was made, what time span was involved?
The scheme was launched on 15 October 2012 with a closing date for receipt of applications of 30 November 2012, subsequently extended by me to 7 December 2012. These payments are subject to very stringent EU audit standards, which is to be expected given that these are co-funded schemes. All area-based schemes under the existing rural development programme are subject to EU regulations which require detailed administrative checks on all applications, including cross-checks with the land parcel identification system, to be completed before payments can issue.
These rigorous procedures, together with on-farm inspections, apply equally to AEOS 3, and are necessary to ensure that applications meet the scheme conditions and cross-compliance requirements.
Approximately 6,000 farmers were approved into the AEOS 3, with a contract commencement date of 1 May 2013, and under EU rules detailed administrative checks had to be completed before the first payments could issue. I am pleased to say that the prepayment validation checks have now been completed on all AEOS 3 applications. In accordance with those rules payments must issue in two tranches, with a first tranche of 75% of the amount due followed by a second tranche of 25%. Taking AEOS 1, 2 and 3 together, approximately 20,000 farmers are in the scheme.
AEOS 3 payments commenced last week and a total of €5.5 million issued to all cases that successfully cleared the administrative checks. Payments will continue over the coming weeks and officials in my Department are working to resolve any outstanding issues with a view to issuing remaining payments as soon as possible.
The time between the scheme being announced and the first payments being issued was one year and seven months. When will the 25% balance be paid?
I have explained why there is a delay. The Deputy has been a Minister and he has a pretty good understanding of how the schemes work. There is an application process after which the applications are validated and a series of checks are required before payments can issue. This is because a significant portion of the payments come through the European Commission. We simply cannot pay when we want to; we must pay when we get approval to do so. We pay as soon as we can, which is why payments are issuing at present. I expect the balancing payment to be made in the latter half of the year but I will come back to the Deputy with firm information.
Is it reasonable to presume that if the Minister announces the GLAS scheme in December 2014 payment will not issue until mid-2016 and no payments will be made in 2014 or 2015 and the second tranche of these payments would be likely to be made in 2017, and this is for farmers who join on the first day. Will everybody have to join the GLAS scheme on one day or will the application process be the same as it was for the REPS scheme whereby one can join over a period of time until all of the places are filled?
The Deputy is a great man to try to sow worry into farmers' minds. We will give more detail of the GLAS scheme next week when we have further publication of the details of the rural development programme. When the GLAS scheme is up and running it will spend approximately €250 million or €260 million a year. It is a huge scheme. We will try to get as many farmers into it as early as we can and we will try to get payments out as early as we can. The timelines outlined by the Deputy are not necessarily the case. We want to get the GLAS scheme out there as soon as we can, but we must get approval from the European Commission for our rural development programme first. We hope to submit the rural development programme to the Commission for consideration by mid-summer, hopefully by the end of June, which is why we will publish a close to finalised document next week to seek final submissions and comments. At some stage in the latter part of the year we hope to get approval for it, after which we will move to open the GLAS scheme as soon as we can. We will try to accept as many farmers into it as we can from day one, which means we need to give time for the application process because there is much work involved in the applications. We will try to move from these applications to actual payments for the work the farmers must do for them as soon as possible afterwards.
