Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Macra na Feirme, the IFA and other farming organisations have done a great deal of work in this area and on land mobility issues generally, particularly Macra. Macra has taken on somebody whose full-time job is to talk to farmers about land mobility and to put arrangements in place. They asked me at the ploughing championships whether, over a certain amount per acre of spend, one would not provide a tax break in order to keep prices down a bit. One is kind of moving into the territory of price fixing in that case, which sometimes has knock-on consequences in terms of the availability of land. The most important thing here is that as much land is available for lease as possible. We do not want any disincentive to landowners in respect of making land available for lease. If we start to control prices and change the incentive, thereby reducing the amount of land available, we will be in a dangerous circle of having less land, thereby driving the price up even more, and trying to force it down through tax measures. We will look at it, but that proposal is a double-edged sword.