Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 3 November 2020
30. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine when details of the new temporary environmental scheme for persons who are not in an environmental scheme at present will be announced; the estimated annual budget for the scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33545/20]
Amharc ar fhreagraA new environmental scheme was promised to follow on from the existing schemes. For those who were in the agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, and had to leave it or were never in a scheme, when will the new environmental scheme that was promised in the interregnum between the old Common Agricultural Policy and the new CAP be published? Will it be a general scheme for farmers to join or a very limited pilot scheme?
I thank the Deputy for his question. I take this opportunity to emphasise my commitment to the provision of agri-environment schemes which will continue to support the farming sector in these uncertain times, along with continuing the environmental benefits that such schemes have delivered. This commitment was demonstrated by a number of key provisions in my Department’s budget Estimate for 2021, including the provision of €79 million in new funding for a range of new agri-environment initiatives.
This funding includes a provision for a number of new initiatives and for the development of a pilot project to examine the implementation of results-based environmental actions. The exact amount of the €79 million to go towards the pilot scheme is something I still have to determine, but the new pilot project will have a significant focus on biodiversity and climate change, with the aim of increasing the number of farmers undertaking agri-environment actions, and will be directed at farmers not currently in the green, low-carbon, agri-environment scheme, GLAS. The Department is working on the details of this pilot. It is expected these pilot actions will inform the development of a major new environmental scheme for agriculture following on from GLAS.
In addition, as CAP negotiations are ongoing, my Department is pressing for the earliest adoption of EU regulations to facilitate the operation of schemes in the period between the current CAP and the CAP strategic plan post 2020. The intention is to roll over the existing schemes from the current rural development programme, RDP, and to ensure that scheme participants have certainty on their scheme participation next year during the transitional phase. The budget funding allows for the rollover of GLAS, the beef data genomics programme, BDGP, and sheep welfare schemes subject to the agreement of the European Commission. It is also intended to have tranches of the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS, next year with the details to be finalised.
I know the importance of environmental schemes and that the Deputy has advocated for them in the past. Certainly this is a pilot scheme that will be in place next year and will be targeted at those not currently in GLAS.
I get very worried when I hear the words "pilot scheme". It seems limited, strange, complicated and worrying. I often wonder if we are going backwards or forwards. When the rural environment protection, REP, scheme, was in place and we moved on to AEOS, a person who left one REP scheme could join another. I refer in particular to those farming in areas of high nature value where much of the land is designated and who have come to depend on these schemes for their livelihoods. They were not allowed expand their flocks or herds. Will the proposed scheme be merely a limited, complicated and convoluted pilot or will it be a general scheme for farmers who have depended on these agri-environmental schemes not only to retain their farms in a good agri-environmental condition, which they must do because most of them live in designated areas, but also to put a crust on the table?
As the Deputy will know, 35,000 farmers were due to leave GLAS at the end of this year. Importantly, the recent budget provides funding to ensure that GLAS can roll over for those farmers to enable them to continue in it next year. Obviously, a number of farmers are outside GLAS and are not in any scheme. The intention is to put in place a pilot scheme for a number of those farmers, which will be an indicator in terms of what the future scheme will look like and which will help inform what the successor scheme to GLAS will be. The new pilot scheme will be targeted at non-GLAS farmers and will be designed in a way that will be reflective of what measures may form the successor to GLAS. Out of the €79 million in funding, measures will be introduced which will be accessible to all farmers, both to those in GLAS and those who are not in a scheme, and in that way they will be more openly available to them.
How many farmers left AEOS and could not join GLAS because they stayed in it until the end? How many of those will be able to join this pilot scheme which it seems will have very limited numbers? This is a bread-and-butter issue. It represents survival for people on their farms. It is not some added extra. It is fine to say all the other farmers will be able to avail of some measures. The cohort of farmers who were in AEOS had been in REPS 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, but financially they have suddenly fallen off a cliff. All the Minister need do is check their financial records. Will they all be facilitated if they want to join this pilot scheme?
Deputy Carthy wants to comment.
I thank Deputy Ó Cuív for tabling this question. I commend and welcome the rollover provisions in respect of GLAS next year, but as Deputy Ó Cuív said, it gives rise to as many questions as answers. My question is in respect of the programme for Government commitment that €1.5 billion - the headline figure for agriculture - would be allocated to a new REP-type scheme.
Some €79 million of that has been allocated for the REPS-style pilot scheme plus the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, roll-over. That is a big gap. When are we going to see the €1.5 billion come to a REPS-style scheme? Will the new scheme be modelled on the previous one, or will it be REPS in name only and actually be a set of obstructions for farmers?
That €1.5 billion commitment is over the ten years until 2030. I note the Deputy's support for the €79 million which we brought forward in the budget as new funding for environmental schemes. I also note that Sinn Féin did not have any such funding commitment in its pre-budget submission so I am sure the Deputy is particularly glad to see we have delivered €79 million in additional funding.
I know that farmers who were availing of the agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, and finished out their scheme were, therefore, blocked from being able to join GLAS because that scheme was closed. Deputy Ó Cuív has raised that matter on a number of occasions. That is a category of farmer that needs to be catered for and it is my intention that those who were previously in a scheme, and wish to be in one again, will be catered for in the new pilot.
