Mr. James Barber:

I am one of those older young farmers. I am in a milk partnership. I took over the home farm in 2011. To be honest, we have been bleeding for five years now. We missed out on installation aid and the early retirement scheme. From the time we went to sign over the farm in 2008 until my father gets the State pension, including the loss of REPS payments, we will have lost out on €144,000 in direct payments. This has had an incredible effect on my personal life, including relationships. That message has not got through. We sat in front of the Minister when he was appointed and we put that across the table to him. There just does not seem to be the political will or enough Deputies and Senators who will make a noise about this. We have come with solutions. With regard to force majeure, when we entered the milk partnership, we were not seen as farming. However, when the new schemes came out in 2015, we did not qualify for them because the EU saw us as farming because we had entered into a partnership. If we are recognised as having joined the partnership, we should be paid installation aid up to the value that applied at the time we entered it. On the other hand, if the EU does not see us as farming, it should let us into the new schemes.

I am in the process of building a slatted unit and a cubicle shed.

I am missing out on the 60% grant; I am getting a 40% grant. My neighbour, up the road, who has no formal agricultural education and is only doing it through the green cert online, is qualifying for them. I have committed to farming since I left school and I am being penalised for it. It is not good enough. The committee is looking for suggestions. On force majeurewhen entering a new partnership, if the installation aid was paid to all those people included, it would cost about €5 million.

Mr. Finan will go through this. We had an agricultural affairs meeting last night about the €11 million. As an organisation of young farmers, we would like that to be strategically implemented. That money should be put towards improving farming at farm level. The agricultural affairs committee vice chairman, Thomas Duffy, proposed that it might go into a grassland improvement scheme, to take half the cost of receding land and where it would lead to an increase the production on grassland on a farm from eight tonnes to 12 tonnes or even 14 tonnes to tie in with our grassland utilisation measures.