Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I am not from a farming background so I might not have the same knowledge of agricultural affairs as my colleagues. The Macra na Feirme presentation seems to make a bit more sense concerning conacre leasing arrangements. If leases are not long enough for farmers to develop their farms, the idea is to penalise people renting on short-term leases rather than shortening the term where maximum relief comes in. That seems to make perfect sense and it would be a worthwhile proposal.

Given that the average farm income in 2013 was €25,000, how many farmers would benefit from stock reliefs? I imagine one would need to have a fairly high taxable income to benefit from the maximum amount of relief. Are any figures available for how many farmers would benefit from such reliefs?