Last week Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon confirmed that Landscape Actions (LAs) are now open for applications from Co-operation Project (CP) teams in the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).

These actions will support farmers in the CP approach of the scheme to target specific environmental priorities, according to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

The Landscape Actions are large-scale environmental actions focusing on issues such as threatened species, water quality protection, invasive species management and encroaching scrub management in species-rich grassland.

The list of potential Landscape Actions and their specifications is currently in a draft state.

It will remain in a draft state until a public consultation process on an appropriate assessment, required under environmental legislation, of the Landscape Actions has been completed.

That public consultation has now been launched, the details of which are on the department website. The closing date of this consultation in August 15.

In the meantime, the department has published a list of potential LAs, of which there a several dozen.

These LAs are outlined in five groups, namely: habitat and wildlife support; invasive species; hydromorphology; scrub removal track installation; and infrastructure.

The first three of these groups of LAs require training to be undertaken by participants. As can be see in the table below, this training is itself listed as an action for which payment can be received in those three groups.

Payments to cover the cost of taking these training courses is €125 per one three-hour course, up to maximum of three courses.

The list of Landscape Actions also includes the payment rate; the action unit (such as a metre, hectare, etc); the maximum payable action units per LA Annual Work Plan (AWP); and the maximum payment per AWP.

For AWPs pertaining to registered farm partnerships, the maximum payable units and maximum payment per AWP will be multiplied by the number of holdings involved, up to a maximum of three holdings.

The list of Landscape Actions in the five groups are as follows:

Finally, the following table outlines certain of the above LAs that are considered time sensitive. Depending on when the AWP is approved (by the issue of an approval letter), the applicable LA will be delivered in that year of approval, or can only be delivered the following year: