Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegates. I listened with interest to what Mr. Lynskey had to say. The Minister gave some indication that he would look at this again. What was proposed was a monumental mistake. Does Mr. Lynskey have figures for the number of hill sheep as opposed to the number of lowland sheep - is it like comparing chalk and cheese? The vast majority of genuine hill sheep farmers would suffer a 100% loss because they would be under the €100 per hectare and for them it would not be an erosion but the total loss of the payment.

Let us presume the Minister will have €18 million. He has told us what he will do with Pillar 2, but he seems to be about €400 million shy of spending it all and that he could afford to give a much larger coupled payment for sheep, if he so desired and still be within his total ceiling of €3.77 billion under Pillar 2. Based on the figures we have got to date, it seem there will be no way he can spend all the Pillar 2 money between now and 2020. It does not stack up. We should be looking for a considerably larger coupled payment from what Mr. Lynskey proposed for the sheep sector today for the following two reasons: first, as otherwise sheep on the lowlands are not competitive, so people will move from sheep to other enterprises; and second, the people in the hills have no choice except sheep. I would be interested to have feedback on those issues. We can all concur with Mr. Lynskey that what has been proposed was badly thought out. I have no doubt but that the Minister is aware of that by now.

I wish to raise a final issue. When the Minister comes in with new schemes, he seems to attach many new conditions to them. The grassland scheme was great because one got the cheque and that was it. There was no more to it. There was not even an application form for the scheme. It was the deluxe of all simple schemes. One got money for having sheep on the basis of a census. Did the association have any discussions with the Minister to try to warn him off making this a really complicated scheme? Did the witnesses advise against the imposition of all sorts of conditions that would inhibit people from taking part in it? The great advantage of the scheme was that everybody got paid on the basis of a census.