All farmers participating in GLAS should be aware of the record sheets they must maintain for the duration of the GLAS contract.

The Department says these record sheets will issue at the beginning of each year until the end of the contract.

All record sheets should be retained for the duration of the contract.

To fill out the sheets, the GLAS application summary, that you got in the post, including maps, confirming the GLAS actions that you were approved to undertake, will make the job much easier.

In these sheets, you must record the LPIS number where actions were carried out.

Each GLAS action has a section in the record sheet and different information will be required depending on the type of action carried out.

For example, for bird boxes, the sheets look for the LPIS number, the number of boxes installed and maintenance carried out, if any, including date of installation of boxes.

GLAS payment update

More balancing payments have been made in GLAS. Since balancing payments were issued to almost 15,000 farmers on 7 July, a further 1,500 payments have been issued, bringing the total value to €10.25m.

However, there are 20,200 farmers still waiting on the remaining GLAS payments.

The Department has estimated that a further 1,000 balancing payments will issue later this week.

The main reason payments are not issuing to farmers is because nutrient management plans (NMP) have not been submitted. The Department said, to date, 19,500 NMPs (3,000 more since 4 July) have been received and payments will continue to be processed on a weekly basis, as further NMPs are received.

Organic payments

There are about 200 payments still outstanding for various reasons, including inspection cases, according to the Department. A significant number of these are scheduled for payment over the coming weeks.