Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are 120,000 registered herd owners. It is interesting that 90% of these get a payment of less than €25,000, and there must be many dairy farmers in the group. Considering the amount paid per hectare, the majority seem to be under the famous €274. If we cap the really big operators, who do not need the single payment if they are making any money from farming, we would hit what is termed the "armchair farmers". Capping the amount per hectare means that every farmer - including every dairy farmer except any near the 2,000 top payees - would gain. If we assumed there are 400 or 500 dairy farmers in the top group, the other 17,500 dairy farmers would gain €600 if they had 20 hectares, which most dairy farmers would have at least. It may happen, by chance, that money may end up with a farmer on poor land, such as that in Senator Comiskey's area. That would not come from the middle ranked farmer or the very prosperous farmer, instead it would come from the farmers who either stack entitlements or have a very large payment.

It is interesting to consider farm size. The more one digs into figures, the more we can see that some people are earning disproportionate amounts. It is amazing that everybody accepted the capping principle with REPS and the disadvantaged area scheme. If capping is good for one scheme, it should be good for the other. If it is not, capping should not operate anywhere. It is fair to say that the people who oppose capping the single payment would be the first to complain if there was no cap on the other two payments. An entire farm must be farmed in an environmentally friendly way if the farmer is part of that scheme.

Those with the smallest payments have the smallest farms. On average, it is not true to say that those with poor land have much poor land; those with poor land have small payments and those with small payments have the smallest farms, with an average of 32.7 hectares. If there are some enormous operators in this group, there must be many farmers under the average. At payments between €150 to €250 per hectare, the average size farm is slightly bigger at 33 hectares. At payments between €250 and €500 per hectare, the average farm size is 39 hectares. For the farmer receiving between €500 and €1,000 per hectare, the average size is 44.9 hectares. That gives the lie to the idea of the few farmers who own all the mountain. Senator Comiskey could bear out that idea. With most mountains, there could be 50 or 200 farmers who have to walk on 1,000 acres to get to their sheep.

At the point where payments are greater than €1,000 per hectare, there is a collapse in average farm size to 34 hectares. Anybody in this case with €1,000 or more per hectare would have stacked payments. That is the only rational explanation, and these are the real armchair farmers. They are getting money for half the farming. I am interested to know if the witnesses are in favour of a cap on payments. Are they in favour of a cap on the disadvantaged area scheme? Are they in favour of cap on acreage and total payment for REPS?