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

I refer to the whole ball of wax in regard to direct payments - the single payment, area of natural constraint, ANC, and everything else. If we look at all of the grants, there was a 10% drop between 2011 and 2013 and last year there was a drop of €1.769 billion. The total will be down again this year and next. Part of the reason for this is that the single payment has decreased globally, but we are also going to be in a valley period in terms of money coming under the rural development programme, because the REPS payments have virtually stopped and AEOS is coming to an end.

As the Minister rightly said in the Dáil today, the GLAS payments will not come on stream in a significant way until 2015. Has the Minister the figures in regard to how much direct payments will have dropped between 2011 and 2015 - payments which keep many farmers going? What is he going to do to try to level off this payment? It has come down, but I accept it will rise. However, it will never go back to where it was. Live horse, get grass - the farmer must survive, but there will be huge pressure on farmers. Can the Minister quantify how much the total in direct payments will drop from 2011 to 2015 before they begin to rise again?

In regard to piers, I notice under C7, fisheries - as I would have predicted because I know how slow these things are - that only €2.4 million of the €17.95 million put into the Revised Estimate has been spent. I know the Department will receive a pile of bills from the councils in November or December. However, knowing what is happening in my county, I would reckon that between planning permission, the National Parks and Wildlife Service and whatever else, many of the works that have been approved will not be done and dusted by the end of the year, depending on the amount of work. Can the Minister guarantee he will be able to carry forward those capital moneys into next year? This is vital because in the case of substantial works, if works are approved in March and one must go through all the statutory obligations and consultation, particularly in highly sensitive environmental areas where there are significant problems as a result, it will prove impossible to get the various planning requirements in place and work tendered and completed by the end of the year. Can the Minister guarantee he will be able to guarantee a roll-over of the moneys in question to next year? Normally one can carry over unspent capital and it is vital we are assured of that.

My next question relates to genomics. Based on the figures given by the Minister, I estimate a little under the Minister's budget of €23 million, some €22 million, indicates that give or take half the farmers joined the scheme this year. If the other half does not join the new scheme in time next year, will this have a detrimental impact on them or will it undermine the whole project? Significant money is being spent on trying to get the genomics project right and to improve the suckler cow herd. Has any study been done on the effect of a significant increase in the number of dairy animals that will comprise the dairy herd? Only a proportion of these will be needed as heifers for replacements. Given that selection of the sex of calves will be more prevalent, we will have huge numbers of dairy cross beef breeds, which will change the metrics of the genomic scheme. Therefore, we could have these animals coming in from the side, whose primary purpose as dams is to produce milk but which will have to be disposed of into the beef herd because of the huge surplus. Has the impact of this on the suckler cow farmer been examined? How does this fit in regard to genomics and trying to get the best beef breeds when we will have a greater proportion of dairy breeds going for beef?