Mr. Derry Dillon:

I will pick up on two points, the first being stamp duty relief for young trained farmers. Our proposal is that we focus on extending the age to 40 for the purchase of land, because we feel young farmers may be in a better position in their late 30s to purchase land and they should still have that advantage over another farmer who might have better financial means. We have not proposed the extension of the age to 40 on the transfer of the land and we want to retain the age limit at 35 in that regard. As Senator Lombard said, there is a spike in the number of transfers made on the 34th birthday, but we want to retain that while changing the age restriction in regard to purchase. Young farmers say they are in a better position to purchase land when they are in their late 30s and we want to give them that advantage.

Second, I want to pick up on the points made about older young farmers. It is a critical issue and is an Irish phenomenon rather than a European phenomenon. This is a result of the stop-start nature of young farmer schemes. We had installation aid but we stopped it, then started it, then stopped it, then started it again. As a result, people fall between the cracks and fall outside the definitions of particular schemes. That is why we have a cohort of older young farmers who have never been eligible for schemes. Our president has outlined the importance of funding initiatives such as the national reserve. We had no national reserve last year. If we are fortunate enough to have a national reserve this year, we hope that nobody who missed the scheme last year will miss out due to eligibility criteria. That is how these issues come about. If we have schemes for young farmers, we must keep them open for the duration of each CAP reform. Most European countries keep them open for the full duration of the reform but we have not had that consistency in the past. We need to learn the lessons of the past, which suggest that if we do start a young farmers scheme, we need to keep it open. Otherwise, we will have this scenario of older young farmers, which we would not have had if we had kept schemes open in the past.