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

I only have a few comments. I am going through the subheads and I do not think the Minister will be changing his budget now as it is too late. Accordingly, it is as well to focus on a number of specific issues today. I always feel these meetings would be a lot more useful before the Estimates are finalised, and now we have the Revised Estimates.

On the first page mention is made of taxation. This is not strictly the Minister's function but he brought up the subject. Can he get us figures from his colleague, the Minister for Finance, or from the Revenue Commissioners, as to what farmer-specific schemes actually exist? How many farmers avail of the schemes each year? It is important to get a fix on this issue. We always talk about taxation but I would like to know how many of these measures affect how many people. I suspect a lot of other people would like to know that too.

On page 2, in respect of a financial issue, it states, "We will deliver an additional €4 billion of EU and national funding in the period up to 2020". We discussed this before but the Minister might clarify the matter again for me. Does the year mean 2020 or 2023 in terms of the actual payout? Is it n, n + 2 or n + 3? It makes a difference if it is spread over the period from now to 2020 or from now to 2023, particularly as we are in 2015. It then states, "€52 million will be paid out to REPS farmers this year and €70 million to AEOS farmers, of which there are almost 17,000 and 15,000 respectively". On the figure of 15,000, the Minister, in a reply to a parliamentary question I raised on 12 February 2015, stated that there were 19,272 farmers between AEOS 1, 2 and 3. He might account for the 4,272 farmers missing there.

I understand the Minister opened GLAS at the weekend.