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

There are other important things we are trying to do in terms of this budget around the taxation system. We got a very good response from the Department of Finance last year and the year before that on innovative ways of using the tax system to encourage certain practices in farming such as encouraging a movement away from the conacre towards long-term leasing, getting tax deductions in terms of foreign earnings in the food sector and a series of other measures. We have brought a series of new tax proposals to the Department of Finance this year, some of which I hope we will be successful in getting through and some of which we probably will not be. This is not all about expenditure, it is also about trying to do strategic things with the tax system. We put in a detailed submission to the Department of Finance as far back as July on using the tax system to make strategic changes in agriculture that would be helpful.