Mr. Eddie Punch:

Deputy Barry talked about fragmentation of land. We continuously make the point about roll-over relief. This also ties in with the increase in capital taxes. It only arises occasionally so there are no real implications for the Exchequer. They are one-off cases. Where the opportunity arises for a farmer to dispose of an outside field and buy a field next door, he is absolutely crucified by the combination of capital taxes, so it is very hard to do it. Stamp duty was cut and that is welcome, but if he ends up paying a little more for the land next to him he must make those repayments out of after-tax income. If one makes enough profit to be able to pay for buying the field next door, it is 52%. That is just one example.

With regard to ESB costs, we are not here to advocate cutting public sector pay. We are well aware of the fact that most of the people in that sector are earning low wages. On the other hand, however, one must ask why are we discussing cutting a disadvantaged area payment when the ESB average wage is €70,000 or €80,000. A college lecturer in the UK earns £48,000; the equivalent wage here is €70,000 to €80,000. We must always ask why the most disadvantaged farmers are being hit in this case. To be fair, our view is that the REPS got too big and too costly. We all must admit that. There were 62,000 people in it. We must be a little more sensible about targeting decent payments to people who really need them.

In future we would like to see marginal farmers being looked after a little better under schemes such as the disadvantaged areas and agri-environment schemes. In Ireland, a huge number of farmers are depending on a single payment of €10,000 or €12,000, or even up to €20,000, under REPS and the disadvantaged areas scheme. They are active farmers. They would not be the biggest and most productive farmers, but they are active. They have experienced a huge reduction, almost a halving, of their payment before we even discuss CAP reform. These are the guys we are concerned about in that regard. Perhaps targeting is the answer.

With regard to the young farmer installation aid, we proposed €10 million. The reason is that each year we are watering down the residual costs of the early retirement scheme and what is left is the odd young farmer installation payment which has been made over the last number of years. That is gradually decreasing. It reduced by €3.5 million last year and has been reducing each year since those schemes were shut down under the previous Administration. There is some scope there. As people come out of REPS there is scope to do a little more. There is no reason to be cutting.

Gross voted expenditure for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food went from €2.1 billion in 2008 to approximately €1.3 billion last year. That is a huge cut. That Department appears to have taken a much higher proportional cut in its expenditure than many of the other Departments, so I do not understand why we keep coming back to agriculture. That said, some of the Government's plans do not work quite as well as it might appear. In 2011, the Estimates for agriculture put Exchequer pay at 7% less. That was due to redundancies, early retirement and so forth, but Exchequer pensions are correspondingly 29% higher. That is just for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. It is difficult to achieve savings in current expenditure in the Department and that is why we urge the Government to look at the overall picture.

The easy target of closing schemes is unacceptable. REPS expenditure was €341 million in 2009 and €243 million in 2012. Soon, as schemes close down, it will be much less. The point we want to emphasise is that farmers have done more than their bit. With regard to the commonage question, we are well aware of it. It is not in our pre-budget submission because it is separate but it is a major issue.

A question was asked about the greyhound fund. Areas of expenditure could be examined and that is all I will say on the matter.