Put GLAS cash back into DAS payments

Not as bad as last year . . . but the 2015 January storms can still pack quite a punch, as this photo at the Salthill Prom by JOE O'SHAUGHNESSY clearly shows.

placeholder image — Not as bad as last year . . . but the 2015 January storms can still pack quite a punch, as this photo at the Salthill Prom by JOE O'SHAUGHNESSY clearly shows.

MONIES earmarked for the 2015 GLAS scheme should be immediately redirected into the Disadantaged Areas fund – unless the environmental scheme can be started up over the coming days and weeks.

The call has come from Galway IFA Chairman, Pat Murphy, who said that it was completely unacceptable for GLAS still not to be opened, over a year after the scheme was announced by Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, at the IFA AGM in Dublin in January, 2014.

“Our next course of action on GLAS is a lobbying session in Dublin with the Oireachtas members next Wednesday (Jan. 21) when we will be conveying the absolute disappointment among farmers over the failure to get the scheme up and running.

“The way things are shaping up, it seems as if very little GLAS money will arrive in farmers’ pockets at all this year. Unless there’s an immediate change in this, I am asking that the GLAS monies for this year be directed back into the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme.

“At least this would pump some badly needed cash back into farming across the West of Ireland, an injection that would give a significant boost to the economy of the region,” said Pat Murphy.

He said that the IFA had tried to ascertain the reasons for the hold-up in the go ahead for the 2015-2020 Rural Development Plan, but without any progress. Issues had arisen, he added, but they seemed like routine questions that could be sorted out without any undue delay.

This week, IFA President Eddie Downey has said that farmers’ patience was running thin in relation to the slow progress in the implementation of vital farm schemes, such as GLAS.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.