Fears had been growing that farmers who apply to the Green Low-Carbon Agri-Environmental Scheme (GLAS) may not receive a payment in 2015. Concerns were continually raised over funding.

Despite these concerns, a spokesperson for Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney told the Irish Farmers Journal that the €20m budget for GLAS in 2015 has been confirmed.

Delivery

The Department remains confident of delivering payments in October, November and December of this year. The IFA had been lobbying for an earlier start date.

With a likely maximum payment of €5,000 per annum, the top GLAS payment a farmer will be able to receive in 2015 is €1,250 as they can only receive a payment for a quarter of the year.

It was this week last year when Minister Coveney and An Taoiseach Enda Kenny announced the plans for GLAS, and since then there has been confusion regarding when the scheme would open for applications, how many it would be open for and when payments would hit farmers’ bank accounts.

Applications

Earlier this week, Minister Coveney confirmed that GLAS will open next month for applications.

Speaking before the Joint Oireachtas Agriculture Committee, Minister Coveney confirmed that the European Commission is close to giving sign-off to Ireland’s rural development programme, which would see the GLAS open in the middle of next month.

“By the middle of next month we will be in a position to make progress on the opening of GLAS,” the Minister said, before adding that other schemes including the 2015 beef genomics scheme should open “in the middle of March”.

Fianna Fáil agriculture spokesman Éamon Ó Cuív, however, expressed concern that GLAS may not open at all in 2015. He said it could be 2016 before farmers will see payments for the scheme.

“The minister’s plans are over ambitious,” Ó Cuív said. “There’s likely to be no (GLAS) payment in 2015, it’s looking more likely every day,” Ó Cuív added.

Agricultural consultants have also expressed concerns with the time frame for processing applications. Consultants are likely to have just 12 weeks in which to process some 30,000 applications.

Processing

Breián Carroll, a Mayo-based consultant, said he had hoped for more time to process applications.

“Ideally, we had been hoping for a wider opening space, but we will do what we can,” Carroll said.

“We’re focusing on individual customers and we expect to have the capacity to deal with them. We’re gearing up to turn nobody away, but we know it will be tough,” Carroll said.

Carroll held a meeting in Swinford, Co Mayo, on Tuesday night. Approximately 180 farmers attended, with the vast majority seeking more information on GLAS.

There also was a large attendance at an IFA-organised GLAS/commonage meeting in Bunclody, Co Wexford, with over 200 farmers present. The call was again for the scheme to be opened immediately, with patience running thin.