I welcome news of the re-opening of the Glas Scheme in two weeks time, sadly however only 10,000 farmers will be admitted. I would have hoped that the Minister would have included 25,000 farmers between now and next June or July in lieu of what was a bad year weather wise. From what I understand at the moment the re-opening of the Glas Scheme will be tilted towards commonage farmers and will be more suitable to farmers in the south of the country as farmers in category 3 will find it difficult to access the Glas Scheme this time around. Thus the fear I have is that this might exclude a lot of West of Ireland farmers.
As we have seen over the last year with weather conditions, a lot of farmers, as with other schemes, might not have been able to put in wild bird cover, and one option that I would propose to the minister is that farmers would cut their hedges and grass along the road side twice a year which would help tourism, the countryside and health and safety on our rural roads and use this as one of the measures to comply with scheme and relax the wild bird cover