List of Commonage Advisors is Published

The Dept. of Agriculture have published the list of approved commonage advisors. Just under 1,600 commonages now have an advisor. These advisors can now start walking commonages, talking to farmers and developing plans. This is a huge step forward, commonage planning can now finally get out of the traps.

 

There are about another 1,000 commonages involving at least one GLAS applicant that have not yet had an advisor appointed. The bulk of these (c 800) are commonages where more than one person applied for the Commonage Advisor role, a smaller number are commonages where no advisor applied. In the case of multiple applications, the Dept. of Agriculture will have to make a decision on who to appoint. The method for selecting an advisor in such cases is as follows. First the advisor with the support of the greater number of farmers will get selected, if two or more advisors have the support of an equal number of farmers, than the advisor with the support of the farmers with the greatest number of shares will be selected. If this also results in a draw than the advisor who has the support of the farmers owning the greater number of sheep will get the nod. This will be adequate to break the deadlock in the vast bulk of cases.

 

In the case of commonages where no advisor has applied, the Dept. of Agriculture briefly reopened the application period and I am sure  at least some of these sites will get an advisor to apply. The remainder will have an Advisor assigned by the Dept. of Agriculture. The farmers will have no say in this process.

 

The Dept. of Agriculture are also writing to farmers, officially informing them of who the Commonage Advisor is. The farmers on a given commonage must sign up to this advisor, even if they had previously signed up with someone else. Inevitably this means that some farmers will have to deal with a Commonage Advisor who is not their own Farm Advisor. In some cases, farmers with multiple commonages will have to deal with a number  of different advisors. This may make the process a little more complicated but it is unavoidable. If this applies to you, than make sure the two advisors are aware that you are involved in a second commonage and ensure that commitments made in each plan do not conflict with each other.

 

A full list of Advisors linked to each commonage can be found by following  the link below.

 

http://agriculture.gov.ie/media/migration/farmingschemesandpayments/glas/ApprovedCommAdvisors240815.xls

Approval of Commonage Advisors

The Dept. of Agriculture have restarted the process of formally approving commonage advisors. A large number of such approvals issued by post to advisors yesterday. Our estimate is that 50-60% of applications have now been dealt with. We expect the remainder to issue in the very near future. 

Letters to the farmers in each commonage, formally notifying them of the relevant approved advisor can be expected in the coming days. It is important for farmers to note that they must sign a Commonage Authorisation Form for the approved advisor, this applies even if they had previously signed one for someone else. This is required to allow the advisor to access relevant information about the farmers stocking rates and sheep numbers, information that he or she will need to complete the Commonage Management Plan. 

This is a big step forward and along with the guidelines issued earlier in the week will now allow the production of Commonage Management Plans to begin in earnest. 

Further Applications for Commonage Advisor Positions.

The most recent listing of applications for Commonage advisor positions shows that advisors have applied for a further 44 commonages, bringing the total to 308.

The latest list includes sites in Waterford and Wexford for the first time. The County with the greatest increase is Donegal with 14 applications. Galway continues to be very strong with a further 12 applications. The rate of increase in Mayo has slowed to just an additional 4 commonages in the last week. Cavan, Sligo, Leitrim and Tipperary also show modest increases in numbers. The current position is shown on the table below.

County	No. of Commonages	% of National Total
Galway	117	37.99
Mayo	71	23.05
Donegal	50	16.23
Tipperary	17	5.52
Kerry	12	3.90
Leitrim	12	3.90
Cavan	8	2.60
Sligo	7	2.27
Cork	4	1.30
Wicklow	3	0.97
Waterford	3	0.97
Clare	1	0.32
Laois	1	0.32
Roscommon	1	0.32
Wexford	1	0.32
Totals	308	100.00

 

We probably should not read too much into last week’s figures coming as they were in the week that both GLAS and the BPS schemes closed.  Advisors were preoccupied with those schemes and so applications for commonage advisory positions were almost certainly depressed.  However with less than two weeks until the closing date for these applications the application rate can be expected to pick up.

This leaves us with two very obvious questions.

1. Will the expected increase in applications be enough to cover the bulk of Commonage applicants?
2.  What role will the Commonage Implementation Committee take in accommodating those left behind?

The answers to these questions will become clear soon enough.

How many Active Commonage Advisors are there?

The Dept. of Agriculture’s website lists 275 Advisors that have been approved for the production of Commonage Management Plans. Of these only 39 have been approved/ applied to be the advisor for one or more commonages. The list of active advisors and the number of commonages that they are associated with is given below.  

As you can see out of the 39 advisors involved, to date the 10 most active account for 66% of the total. Yourcommonage advisors Thady O Brien, Fergal Monaghan and Craig Gilligan have been approved/ applied for 52 commonages or just shy of 20 % of the national total.

	No. of Commonages	% of National Total
Michael Martyn	31	11.74
Thady O'Brien	30	11.36
Fergal Monaghan	21	7.95
Brian Dolan	19	7.20
John Geraghty	15	5.68
Pat Burke	14	5.30
John Staunton	13	4.92
Emmet McGloin	11	4.17
Martin Heffernan	11	4.17
Enda Gilrane	10	3.79
Ian Kenny	9	3.41
Stephen Hynes	8	3.03
John Noonan	7	2.65
Pat O'Donnell	7	2.65
Peter Cannon	7	2.65
Aoife Kelliher	6	2.27
Joanne Hamilton	6	2.27
Claire Greehy	4	1.52
Liam McKinney	4	1.52
Andy Ryder	3	1.14
Susan Clancy	3	1.14
Tom Dawson	3	1.14
Vincent Costello	3	1.14
John McDonagh	2	0.76
Ray Gilmartin	2	0.76
Wesley Carr	2	0.76
Andy Dunne	1	0.38
Craig Gilligan	1	0.38
Damian Scahill	1	0.38
Darragh Kelly	1	0.38
Deirdre Ward	1	0.38
Derek Beckett	1	0.38
Fergal Boyle	1	0.38
Gerard P. Durkan	1	0.38
John Fleming	1	0.38
Laura Johnston	1	0.38
Liam Butler	1	0.38
Michael Flynn	1	0.38
Shane O'Meara	1	0.38
Totals	264	100.00