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

Incorrect. From the Department's own data, 80% of farmers with fewer than ten cows have said "No". Based on the data I was given yesterday, only 8,677 herd owners with fewer than ten cows have applied for the scheme. I think Mr. Gleeson will find a huge rate of attrition among those. I told all the farmers in Connemara to apply because we were hoping to have a bit of common sense about this, yet if the rules change, they will find they are out. There are 39,605 farmers in that group, so the number of farmers with ten cows or fewer who have applied equates to 22%. In the next group up it is 53%. It then goes in around 70% for the remainder and does not vary that much. The biggest cohort of farmers, amounting to 55% or 73,000, have ten or fewer suckler cows. Only 22% applied, so in other words, virtually 80% of those farmers said, "Sorry, no thank you." It is a massive number of farmers. It might not count at the Department because they do not count for an awful lot of cows, but these people are trying to live.

Mr. Gleeson says he has 80% calving. Did it strike him that, as Teagasc points out all the time, when he takes out the single farm payment, the disadvantaged areas scheme payment, the areas of natural constraint payment and so on, there is no profit in the farming of suckler cows? More calving is probably a zero-sum game in terms of increased profitability. Farmers are cute; why would they break their necks buying more feedstuff and increasing their calving rate if there is no profitability? If Mr. Gleeson can get more profit for the farmer, he will find that the farmer will suddenly get his calving rate up. Farmers will do things that can bring profit. All these artificial methods of trying to boost production are only doing what they did in New Zealand; they are making the factories richer and doing nothing for farm incomes.