Agriculture officials to host commonage meeting

Agriculture officials to host commonage meeting


Anton McNulty

COMMONAGE farmers have been urged to attend a meeting hosted by Department of Agriculture officials to discuss future requirements for farming schemes.
The meeting, which will take place tonight (Tuesday) in Knockranny House Hotel in Westport at 8pm, is one of a number of meetings hosted by the Department for commonage farmers across the country. A similar meeting will take place tomorrow night in Peacocke’s Hotel, in Maam Cross.
The purpose of the meetings is to provide information on future requirements under the Basic Payment Scheme under Pillar I and the GLAS scheme under Pillar II of the CAP. The officials are expected to outline changes to the criteria for qualifying for the GLAS scheme following the scrapping of the Collective Agreement criteria.

Workshop format
A spokesperson for the Department stated that the meetings will be public but will take place in a ‘workshop’ format.
The meeting is expected to be of interest to a number of commonage farmers in Mayo who had been to the fore in the protests against collective agreement. Instead of collective agreement farmers will now have to sign up to a Commonage Management Plan before they apply to enter the GLAS scheme.
Farmers believe that questions surrounding the drawing up of the Management Plan need to be clarified. The application date for entry into GLAS is expected to open at the end of the year and some farmers have raised questions on whether the Management Plan will be ready in time.
Sinn Féin councillor Rose Conway-Walsh encouraged farmers to attend the meeting to question the Department officials on details of the plan.
“The devil will be in the detail and there is still clarification needed from the plan. The [protest] meeting in Westport along with the protests made the Department see some sense and I welcome the officials coming to Westport to meet the farmers,” she said.