Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

The leaked document refers to regeneration and it mentions the words "installation aid". I do not think that necessarily means the kind of installation aid we had the last time around but it means some kind of payment for installation. This time around we have already done a number of things for young farmers based on the flexibility we had, including a 25% top-up on direct payments for young farmers. We have a number of tax reliefs as well. We have succession farm partnerships to encourage succession, because apart from the age profile, surveys indicate that many farmers do not have a successor in mind or do not have a successor.

We spoke about simplification a minute ago. What is clear is that the simplest tool is the one we chose, which was the young farmers top-up. The fewer schemes we have, the simpler it is. It is easier to top up a basic payment than to create a rural development scheme with a lot of deliverables and criteria with which one must comply. The idea behind young farmers schemes generally is to encourage people to start to deliver some change. That is why we opted for the maximum young farmer payment the last time around.