Minister seeks submissions on agri-environmental scheme

INTERESTED parties were have been invited by Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Minister Brendan Smith to make submissions aboutthe detailed contents ofa new agri-environmental scheme which will be introduced in 2010.

Mr Smith said funding for the new scheme will come from the additional modulation funds, which he ensured would stay with Irish farmers in the recent negotiations on the CAP ‘Health Check’, and from the exchequer.

An outline of the scheme has already been sent to the European Commission as part of a set of proposals for an amended Rural Development Programme. This followed an earlier consultation exercise about the use of the modulation funds.

Mr Smith said the new scheme will consist of a “menu” of actions from which farmers can select options that will be suitable for their particular farms and farming systems.

“The outline I have sent to the commission consists mostly of elements that will be familiar to farmers as elements of REPS, such as biodiversity options and supplementary measures,” he said.

The EU regulations identify certain “challenges” for which modulation money must be used. These include climate change, renewable energies, water management and biodiversity.

Mr Smith said the outline of the new scheme that has gone to the commission was designed to target these challenges.

“I am now inviting stakeholders to comment on the detailed elements of the scheme and to put forward ideas that could be incorporated in the scheme to help deliver benefits in terms of water quality, biodiversity and climate change,” he said.

IFA deputy president Derek Deane said Mr Smith must ensure the scheme proposed to replace REPS is properly funded. Farmers currently in REPS 3 must be a priority in the new scheme, he said.

He said farmers are outraged with the minister’s abrupt decision to close down REPS 4. Thousands of them had made substantial investments on their farms to be REPS compliant, many with the aid of bank borrowings.

Farmers have been encouraged by the Government and the European Commission to join REPS. It was totally unacceptable that Mr Smith had pulled the plug on REPS 4.

* The deadline for submissions is September 4. They should be sentby email to [e-mail] or else by post to the REPS Policy Unit, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Johnstown Castle Estate, Co Wexford.