Draft specifications of the measures in the new GLAS scheme have been given to planners and the farm organisations by the Department of Agriculture, which now wants feedback.

Payment rates proposed for the 30 measures were already known. The specifications now detail minimum and maximum uptake for each, plus completion deadlines. For example, a farmer interested in the stone wall maintenance measure would need at least 10m on his or her holding and could claim on a maximum of 4,000m. At the payment rate of 70c per metre per year, the minimum payment for this measure would therefore be €7 per year and the maximum €2,800.

Applicants will be most interested in the measures which have a high payment rate per hectare. The maximum area that could be given to traditional hay meadow (€315/ha/yr) would be 10ha. The same ceiling is proposed for low input permanent pasture (€314/ha/yr). The maximum annual payment for these measures would therefore be €3,150 and €3,140 respectively.

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In contrast, only the scheme’s overall €5,000/yr ceiling applies to some key measures of high environmental value, including riparian margin, arable grass margin, endangered birds, commonage, private natura land, low emission slurry spreading and minimum tillage. So a farmer with enough qualifying land could build a full €5,000/yr payment on one of these measures only.

In practice, applicants are likely to find themselves taking up at least one other measure for a variety of reasons, one being to get priority ranking in case the scheme is oversubscribed.

The IFA’s rural development chair Flor McCarthy said that he wanted more flexibility for applicants in which measures they could take up: “We want every farmer who wants to join to be accepted in year one. Also, the scheme should open immediately and make a payment for all of 2015.”

Paul Mooney