Tag Archives: commonage

IFA Hill Committee chairman Pat Dunne has urged the Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed to open up the process for planners to submit Commonage Management Plans. IFA will not accept any delays in payments to the 7,000 commonage farmers, who have applied for GLAS and whose Commonage Management Plan must be submitted by the end of October. Currently, planners are assessing commonages but do not have the facility to make the online application for the plan. Mr Dunne said that the minimum stocking level for the individual farmer must be in place by the end of the year but IFA is insisting that once a Commonage Management Plan is lodged, this triggers full payment to the commonage farmers involved. With the third phase of GLAS due to open shortly, it is expected that another 3,000 commonage farmers will join the scheme with a commencement date of January 1, 2017. In relation to commonages, where difficulties may arise, IFA is insisting …

The Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney has released further details of the first tranche of applications for GLAS, Ireland’s new agri-environment scheme, co-funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. Minister Coveney welcomed the number of commonages that 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. “This is a major step towards the establishment of greatly enhanced management regimes for these upland areas. Some 4,000 individual GLAS applications from commonage farmers were received, but the minister pointed out that another 5,000 commonage farmers are already in AEOS with time left to run on those agri-environment contracts. “These farmers are only likely to join GLAS when their AEOS contracts expire,” the minister said, adding that specific provision had been made to accept these farmers into the scheme in due course. This will be of particular interest to farmers in North and East …