A new agri-environment pilot scheme will be in place for farmers next year, and will be targeted at those not currently in the Green, Low-carbon, Agri-environment Scheme (GLAS), Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has confirmed.

This scheme, it was added, will “be designed in a way that will be reflective of what measures may form the successor to GLAS”.

Responding to a question in the Dáil yesterday (Tuesday, November 3) from Fianna Fáil TD Eamon Ó Cuiv, the minister said the new scheme “will have a significant focus on biodiversity and climate change, with the aim of increasing the number of farmers undertaking agri-environment actions, and will be directed at farmers not currently in the GLAS”.

“The exact amount of the €79 million to go towards the pilot scheme is something I still have to determine,” he said.

“The department is working on the details of this pilot. It is expected these pilot actions will inform the development of a major new environmental scheme for agriculture following on from GLAS,” the minister added.

Upon hearing this, deputy Ó Cuiv said: “I get very worried when I hear the words ‘pilot scheme’. It seems limited, strange, complicated and worrying.

Will the proposed scheme be merely a limited, complicated and convoluted pilot or will it be a general scheme for farmers who have depended on these agri-environmental schemes not only to retain their farms in a good agri-environmental condition, which they must do because most of them live in designated areas, but also to put a crust on the table?

The minister replied that funding has been set aside for the roll-over of GLAS to enable farmers to continue in it next year, while a new pilot scheme will be introduced for farmers outside of GLAS and not in any scheme.

This, he added will “be an indicator in terms of what the future scheme will look like and which will help inform what the successor scheme to GLAS will be”.

The new pilot scheme will be targeted at non-GLAS farmers and will be designed in a way that will be reflective of what measures may form the successor to GLAS.”

AEOS farmers

Deputy Ó Cuiv raised concerns as to whether Agri-Environment Options Scheme (AEOS) farmers who were not allowed to join GLAS because they remained in the scheme until the end, and “financially had suddenly fallen off a cliff” would be facilitated to join this pilot scheme.

Minister McConalogue said: “That is a category of farmer that needs to be catered for and it is my intention that those who were previously in a scheme and wish to be in one again will be catered for in the new pilot.”