Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Monaghan has touched on a very important point. All the commonage land in the west is organic essentially because it is commonly owned and no one spreads fertiliser there. The only thing running through it is the water coming through the rocks, which is organic water nearly as well. The biggest mistake in the CAP reform was not to front-load payments for smaller farmers across the board, including organic. Our spokesman, Deputy Ó Cuív, championed that cause because it would have helped smaller farmers to stay in business. There are some smaller farmers who might be getting on in years and want to hand it over but there is no incentive to do so. They are cornered because they are not able to expand. They do not have the resources, they are not making the profit and they cannot expand. The bigger guys are coming in and taking over the land. Unfortunately, the structure of the CAP is helping the big guy and penalising the small guy.

While it has increased to €170 per hectare, that does not even meet the average hectare payment in Ireland, which is about €250 or €260 per hectare. They are not even getting the average hectare payment. Some people are getting €500 or €600 per hectare. Others earn €100 and they have been taken up-----