IFA Meet Agricultural Consultants on Glas and Call for Early Start-up

At a meeting with the Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA) this week, IFA Rural Development Chairman Flor McCarthy said both organisations agreed that the priority for the Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney must be the early opening of GLAS and TAMS.

Flor McCarthy said, “At the meeting, both IFA and ACA agreed that Minister Coveney must show greater urgency in getting all schemes under the RDP in place for farmers to apply this year, with payment applying in the case of GLAS from a contract date early in 2015”.

On TAMS, the Rural Development Chairman said the new scheme must be broad based, cross-sectoral and have a definite timeline for the processing of applications, approvals and payments.

On Knowledge Transfer, IFA expressed concern that the measure as it is currently designed will not have the impact it should have. Both organisations agreed that farmers should be able to join two Discussion Groups, and not one as proposed in the RDP.

It was decided that it was important that draft details of all schemes are available well in advance of implementation, including how commonages will be dealt with under both Pillar I and Pillar II schemes.