The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
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 …
Read More »