Mr. Paud Evans:

I will answer that. There is a ceiling for all schemes but we can take the single farm payment as an example. The net ceiling for 2012 and 2013 is €1.255 billion, and that is payable on entitlements, as the Deputy knows. There are, essentially, 4.2 million entitlements allocated to farmers and each year, 4.7 million hectares are declared. We are fully utilising our ceiling. We regard 100,000 hectares of commonage land as being within the total reference area but not claimed, and that has no bearing on the level of payments made under any of our schemes, and there is no loss of any EU funding under Pillar 1 or Pillar 2 because of that.

With the 100,000 hectares, there are some dormant shareholders who may be long gone from the country or no longer farming the commonage land or claiming on it. Some farmers deliberately do not claim their entire share of the commonage and take a view that perhaps not all the commonage is eligible. They may be entitled to a one-tenth share of 100 hectares but they may only claim on seven or eight hectares. The loss of the 100,000 hectares arises from individual claimants making a decision; they want to protect total payments.

Many commonage farmers have more land than entitlements. They do not need all of the hectares to be declared to get their full payments.