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

There are three levels of payment on DAS at the moment: less severely handicapped or less favoured areas, more severely handicapped or severely disadvantaged areas, and mountain areas. When one looks at the productivity of the land in the three areas, there is not much difference between good land and less favoured areas, and the difference between that and the more disadvantaged band is relatively marginal in terms of livestock units per hectare. The big jump is that productivity in the areas designated as mountain areas, which are not all mountain tops, is about half that. Many people say that with the disadvantaged area payment, if one can only produce half the volume one should get double the payment. Is it intended to move, even in the present context, to a system under which the payment would reflect the disadvantage? In the new areas of natural constraint scheme, ANCS, under which system it is all done by district electoral division, will the payment be relative to the natural constraint? That would seem the rational thing to do. If my constraint is twice your constraint, one would think I would get the extra payment to make up for it. That is not how it works at the moment. I know there has been a reluctance to change this, because I had to correct the Minister before. At one stage there was a lower payment for mountain areas, which was quite extraordinary, and which was agreed with the Irish Farmers' Association for some amazing reason. When I came in as Minister of State I changed it and made the mountain payment higher. This is an issue on which the Minister should make his own decision, and the criteria should be objective and fair.