Michael Creed, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, has revealed a county-by-county breakdown of the applications for the Beef Environmental Efficiency Pilot (BEEP) scheme.

In answer to a parliamentary question by Fianna Fail TD Charlie McConalogue – his party’s spokesperson on agriculture, food and the marine – the minister provided a table that shows the amount of applications per county.

The figures show that, of the 18,593 applications, the most came from Galway, with 2,015 herd owners putting their names forward for the scheme.

Clare, Cork, Mayo and Roscommon were the only other counties to have uptake figures in four digits.

Mayo had the second highest level of applications, at 1,739, followed by Clare at 1,453.

The lowest level of uptake was in Dublin, at just 53 applications; Kildare had the next lowest, at 212, followed by Carlow at 259.

Looking at a province-by-province breakdown, the highest number of applications came from Connacht, with 6,254.

Munster counties accounted for 5,455 applications, while Leinster made up 4,485 applications; the three Ulster counties – Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan – accounted for 2,399 applications.

In providing the data, Minister Creed explained his reasons for not extending the the application period for the scheme.

“I have not extended the deadline for applications. An application window of three weeks was provided for the initial expression of interest. The pilot was designed to be as accessible to farmers as possible,” said the minister.

He added: “The application process was straightforward and the pilot contains only one measure. I expect that all of the available funding will be utilised.”

Minister Creed’s full list of applications per county can be seen below: