FARMERS WILL be paid less under the newly-renamed Rural Environment Protection Scheme (Reps), it emerged at the Teagasc national Reps conference in Ballinasloe yesterday.
The change is part of a radical overhaul of the scheme being negotiated between the Government and the EU. The new agri-environmental scheme will work within a framework devised by the European Commission. Reps has been running here since 1992 and pays an average of €5,000 per annum.
Earlier this year Irish farmers who are involved in Reps, which is a five-year contract to farm in an environmentally sensitive way, took to the streets in large numbers when the current Reps 4 scheme, was closed to new entrants.
Yesterday, Antonis Constantinou, director in the EU directorate general of agriculture and rural development, outlined the priorities for a new scheme, which were to mitigate climate change, protect water quality, biodiversity, natural resources and alternative energy crops.
He told the 200 delegates that Ireland, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the UK had traditionally very high levels of spending on environmental programmes and in future all schemes would have to be examined as to their overall benefits.
“We see farmers being compensated for actions carried out over and above the environmental conditions that are already in place,” he said.
Michael O’Donovan, principal officer with the Department of Agriculture and Food, said since 1992, €3 billion had been spent on the Reps scheme and a further €1 billion would go to farmers already in schemes before they ended.
“There is €134 million in modulation funds available for the new agri-environmental scheme and to draw that down, there will have to be exchequer funding of around one-third to bring this up to €179 million,” he said.
“If you do the division, then there will be a smaller annual payment made to those who join the new scheme.”
The department, he said, had brought forward a revised scheme to the commission but there had been many queries on it and the commission thinking was now focused on much more specific actions, which could be costed.
He said the schemes under which there was a whole farm approach may be changed to a number of specific options, similar to that in place in Northern Ireland.
Negotiations on a new scheme would have to be completed by December or the funding would be lost.
He said there were 34,000 farmers in the Reps 3 scheme at the end of 2009 and there had been 29,600 applications for Reps 4 up to May last and an additional 1,600 between then and the end of July last.
As the five-year schemes finished, there would be 9,500 farmers completing their programme in Reps 3 in 2010 and a further 23,500 finishing in 2011.
The IFA rural development chairman Tom Turley criticised the Minister for Agriculture for the failure to provide details of a meaningful Reps scheme, despite the fact the consultation process had been continuing for three months.
“It is high time the Minister for Agriculture instructed his department to put in place a meaningful scheme for up to 30,000 farmers who will be leaving Reps 3 over the next two years.
“The allocation of funding indicated over the next four years for the new scheme is woefully inadequate and will translate into payment levels that will make the scheme unattractive to farmers,” said Mr Turley.
The IFA held a series of protests this year over the department’s closure of the Reps 4 scheme to new entrants.