Michael Comiskey (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Downey and Mr. Lynskey for their presentations. I agree with almost everything they said. It is vitally important we help sheep producers. They mentioned the sheep grassland payment, which was absorbed into the single farm payment and which brings us closer to the maximum more quickly than it should. Something has to be done about that. The coupled payment would be a way out of the problem but we have to be careful not to drive the numbers up and leave ourselves with the problem of overgrazing. Maybe if a coupled payment was put in place up to a maximum of €150 or €200, it could help the smaller sheep farmer and it would take less in the way of funds at a time when the money may not be there.

Another way we can help the sheep farmer would be in respect of the €1,000 that was lost in the budget cuts of 2008 and 2009. I have raised this on a number of occasions. Perhaps it could be restored by €500 over two budgets, if not by €1,000 all in one. There are 34,000 sheep farmers with 3.5 million sheep but we do not want to go back to 5 million sheep overgrazing on the hills. Even with commonage frameworks in place we still see a bit of overgrazing here and there around the country. We have to be careful not to damage the environment.

Another problem we have been raising for a while concerns sheep exports to Northern Ireland via the marts. Sheep going from a farm can travel freely but if Northern Ireland people want to come down to Wicklow or Carlow, as they often do at this time of the year, to buy ewes to breed them, there is a difficulty getting them from the marts to Northern Ireland.

On the coupled payment, we see €52 million going into beef genomics and something along those lines should be done for the sheep sector. The STAP programme is very good in its own way in bringing farmers out and getting discussions going but we have to target sheep farmers, particularly young farmers starting off, to encourage them to stay with the business. We do not want numbers to fall any more.

As other members have pointed out, farm assist is a problem and we regularly get calls on that subject. We have to support those people who are dependent on sheep farming and the farm assist will help to boost their income in difficult areas.