Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy advocated that we redistribute more than what the Commission was proposing. Regardless of that, if we chose the payment per hectare flat rate model, then we would have had to break the country up into different regions to reflect different productivity levels. That would have been almost impossible to do and I did not want to do it, which is why we chose the approximation model. I think we got a good win on that and now we have to design it with the flexibility that we have.

The question about making a direct connection between stocking rate and payment is a fair one, but it is not the only issue on the table. Even if we wanted to do so, we are not allowed under world trade rules to directly link payments to productivity, which is why the only option we had available to maintain any link with productivity and stocking rate was to maintain a link with the historical payments. We are moving away from those historical payments and converging towards an average. That was the only way we could maintain some link, and we have done a reasonable job at that for the next seven years.

The redistribution figure is about €103 million. There are dangers in taking the table that I sent to members and using it as the accurate table.