New figures on GLAS have been released by the Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney, which show that 1,300km of new hedgerows will be planted under the first tranche of the scheme.

The Minister said he was delighted by the uptake and by the wide variety of actions chosen.

“By any standards, GLAS is already a huge success and it is clearly going to play a key role in the protection of our rural environment over the new programming period.”

Nearly 27,000 farmers applied to join the Green Low Carbon Agri-Environment Scheme, or GLAS as it is commonly known, in the first tranche and early indications are that most of these will draw close to the maximum annual payment of €5,000.

The Minister welcomed this in particular, as concern had been expressed by some that only a minority of farmers could ever hope to achieve this level of payment.

The most popular action was Low Input Permanent Pasture selected by 20,000 farmers.

Protection of watercourses was another popular choice by 10,000 farmers, while large numbers also chose a variety of actions designed to protect birds, bees and bats. In fact, actions addressing every single objective have been selected by farmers in this first tranche.

The Minister also welcomed the number of commonages which have come into GLAS – applications in respect of just under 2,700 commonages, or well over half of all commonages in the country, have been received.

He said this is a major step towards the establishment of greatly enhanced management regimes for these upland areas.