Mr. John Comer:

There are 1,640 farmers in receipt of €50,000, with 245 in receipt of more than €100,000. Adding the two, one comes up to 1,890 out of registered herd numbers of 120. It is a very small proportion. I readily acknowledge to the committee there are anomalies but I assure members that any other scheme would also have anomalies. Beef farmers, who were lucky enough to get the first, the second premium and the slaughter premium, are an example. There are anomalies with beef finishers because those involved in heifers got nothing at all as it applied only to male animals. There are major anomalies.

The direct question to our organisation was whether we are opposed, in principle, to a cap. We are not opposed in principle and it could be very useful. A cap is provided for in the proposals of Commissioner Cioloş from October 2012. It begins at €150,000 and is graduated to a maximum of €300,000.

One might drill it down to a meaningful cap.

On the question as to whether member states will be able to use discretion to place a cap on some of the payments under the Common Agricultural Policy, it would be folly for a farm organisation to start to pick figures on where it would like to see a cap but not be in position to implement it. We have a duty to represent all our members as best we can and not to have one set of farmers going against the other. We are not opposed to the principle of placing a cap, we would welcome it. I do not believe that discretion will be given to member states to place a cap on the Common Agricultural Policy.

We did discuss Deputy Ó Cuív's proposal to give everybody a €30 per hectare uplift. In my view and that of ICMSA that will create more anomalies than it will solve. We all know that a farmer who has a low stocking density and a large farm has the scope to have off-farm income and to have a job. Perhaps if he has a partner, that person has scope for a job. So the payment will end up going to doctors, solicitors, lawyers, teachers and everyone who has a few hectares of land. They work off-farm and have a good income. They will get this uplift from the money being taken from the full-time farmer, who is required to work full-time by virtue of being the labour unit on the farm. He has no scope for off-farm income. Farmers, as a collective group have €6 billion in borrowings. The percentage of those farmers who are active and involved in the real productive sector are those who have borrowed that money. If one distorts the one constant they have, a single farm payment of between €15,000 to €30,000, it will neither do the farmers who have invested in productive farming nor the national economy a service.