Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Does the Minister have a view on how he will allocate the €25 million for the sheep scheme? Is there talk of a cap on its implementation because there are only 2.5 million ewes? Unnecessary restrictions might be more administratively burdensome and costly than the scheme is worth.

Has the Minister figured out how to resolve the row between the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, ICMSA and the Irish Farmers Association, IFA, about the dairy aid scheme because they do not seem to know? We were not very enlightened about it but there is an argument for the dairy sector about how it will be implemented. The Minister will need to provide €11 million in order to ensure that €22 million will be available otherwise it will hardly be worth fighting over.

A total of 120,000 people get the single farm scheme payment. Is the Minister concerned that corporate farmers are some of the biggest recipients of the single farm payment? I have been fighting that for years. The nice black hair of taxpayers must go grey when they see that happening. Genuine farmers cannot get anything and if they do they are penalised by 1%, 2% or 3% for a small error. It is very easy for a corporate farmer not to have any errors. I hope there will be some sort of review and that will be taken on board to ensure that the money intended to maintain small farmers in accordance with CAP objectives goes to them. It was never intended for large corporate farmers or anybody else. It is about time that we had a proportionate distribution that reflects the reality for the 100,000 farmers who are trying to survive.

I understand that the Minister has appealed the decision in the O'Connor case on the appeals system to the Supreme Court. How is the Department treating that? Why would the Minister appeal something we indicated we had concerns about in the past? Is it not time to bring the 2001 Act into 2017 to make it real and effective and ensure it operates a system that is fair to all concerned? Is it intended to amend the 2001 Act? If it is will the Minister ensure that we have an input into that?