Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

With regard to the €1,200 payment last year to dairy farmers, that was one way of doing things. Obviously, it was very welcome. Everybody likes to get a cheque in the post. When we got the €11 million this time around, we could have sent a very small payment to everybody but it would have been very small because the €11 million was available to all livestock farmers. The Deputy can imagine that it would have amounted to a few shillings. It would not have been an effective thing to do, so we have gone down the other route of this loan scheme, which has taken some engineering. We hope it will be available to everybody. I will not go into all the technicalities but we intend it to be available to livestock, tillage and horticulture farmers. At the same time, there is another process going on in parallel, which is the payment for reducing one's production. One could say that the bigger producer gets more from that, but I do not believe that is the way it will work out. I believe that the producers who are reducing their production anyway will get it, which in this country would tend to be a smaller farmer. The big guy is expanding, not reducing. I do not see that money going to bigger farmers. The position could be different in other countries. Farmers in the Netherlands are required to reduce their cow numbers, and this subsidy is being used to help those who are doing that. It might be going to the bigger farmers in the Netherlands but in our circumstances I do not believe it is going to the bigger farmers here.

The Deputy is right that heather does not qualify. Somebody asked a question about slurry storage. I am told there were 22 calls to our slurry storage helpline. I dealt with the question on the national reserve.