Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 13 April 2017
276. Deputy Dara Calleary asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if the €217 million allocated under the capital plan to 2016 for rural development, seafood development and forestry programmes has been spent; the progress made to date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18756/17]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe information requested by the Deputy is set out in the table:
The €217 million capital allocated in 2016 to my Department referred to by the Deputy was increased to €229m when the €12m capital carried into 2017 from 2016 is taken into account. Of this €160.1 million was allocated to cover capital expenditure under the Rural Development Programme, Seafood Development ( the European Maritime & Fisheries Fund Operational Programme) and Forestry programme. The Forestry programme allocation of almost €112m shown in the table below includes the €12m carried over amount.
|
Title of Scheme/Programme |
2016 Allocation€000 |
2016 Outturn€000 |
|
Rural Development Programme ( TAMS) |
35,800 |
7,806 |
|
Forestry |
111,955 |
102,201 |
|
Seafood Development |
12,275 |
3,670 |
|
Totals |
160,104 |
113,677 |
Clearly expenditure in 2016 for these schemes/programmes was lower than the estimated provision, but in each case I am confident that 2017 will see more substantial drawdown.
- Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme – Since TAMS II was launched in late 2015 more than 6,900 approvals have been issued to farmers. These approvals under Tranches 1 to 5 allow farmers a three year window in which to complete their investment works and make a claim. The 2016 outturn of €7.8 million against the budget of €35.8 million includes payments for only 309 TAMS II grants as well as residual payments under the previous TAMS I schemes. This clearly indicates that many approval holders choose to delay activating those approvals in 2016 but I expect there will be far greater activity in 2017. Furthermore for future tranches the validity period of the approvals has been reduced.
- Forestry – The new afforestation target of 6,500ha was achieved in 2016 but there was a lower than expected drawdown of premia payments for existing forestry for a number of reasons including where forest owners do not apply for their premia, possibly to allow premia to build up to be claimed at some future date, or non-payment of premiums because of poor forest maintenance. Also, under the Forestry Support Scheme, there was a substantial shortfall on forest roads expenditure, however, the implementation of a single consent system for planning forest entrances is anticipated to increase applications to build forest roads and substantially greater expenditure in 2017.
- 2016 was the first year of implementation of the EMFF Operational Programme and most of these schemes attracted satisfactory levels of applications. While payment claims were relatively low for a range of reasons, I anticipate a substantially higher level of draw-down in 2017 as projects are initiated and/or completed.
