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Speaking at the National Rural Networks conference in Athlone on Friday, Fintan O’Brien from the Department of Agriculture said it is now at a stage where it can begin the tendering process for project management teams for the €35m locally led hen harrier and pearl mussel schemes.
“We will make the appointment by the end of the year and then farmers can be recruited to participate in 2017,” O’Brien said. “Any farmers looking to join one of these schemes, for the hen harrier in particular, should be in GLAS and then join the locally led scheme after that to deal with specific actions on your farm.”
GLAS will be reopened in the coming weeks with room for an additional 12,000 participants, the Department has said.
Successful tenders to manage the locally led projects will receive a five-year contract.
“Just like all tranche applications, only the best will go through. If you are through for funding on this, the entire costs are covered – the animation, design of plans and running costs,” O’Brien said. “This is a new way, hopefully, of doing things. Some of them won’t work.”
In his opening address, Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed said he was confident that this bottom-up approach can work.
“In Ireland, we already have a premium example of innovation and collaboration in action in the Burren programme,” Creed said.
“What started out as a germ of an idea is now a fully fledged agri-environment measure, which has buy-in from farmers and is protecting, for future generations, the unique and sensitive habitat that is the Burren. The Burren project worked because practical real-life solutions to real-life problems were found. They were found by means of dialogue and by the open sharing of knowledge, experience and expertise. So, placing farmers and farming practices at the heart of innovation has been proven to work.”
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