Mr. Phil Hogan:

I think it is more of a Kerry one. I did not get a letter from anywhere else. I want to give an absolute assurance that the way part-time farmers get their money at the moment will continue. There are no plans whatsoever by me anyway to change that. Perhaps others have plans to change it but I do not. I have given the responsibility for defining an active farmer back to the member state. That discussion will be had in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with the Minister of the day. I wish Deputy Healy-Rae well in that regard. The last time the measure came up for discussion in the reform programme, agreement could not be reached in the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers on the definition of an active farmer for 28 member states. Bringing it back to each member state means that there will be differences in each member state about what an active farmer is. It will be an interesting debate. Part-time farmers should not have anything to worry about.

We certainly feel empathy and sympathy for farmers affected by the fodder crisis following eight months of rain. Anytime I was asked to do something I did, whether it was to bring forward payments, do something with the three-crop rule or finish the payments for GLAS, we approved it. That is as much as I can do.

Deputy McConalogue asked about Mr. Davis's comments. I noted them. This is the first indication that we have got from the Brexit secretary that there will be some proposals tabled on customs arrangements and partnership, building on the Mansion House speech of Prime Minister May. It will be very interesting to see what is tabled on 17 May. The next five weeks will be very important in the UK because there are local elections, the initiatives outlined by Mr. Davis, and we are also getting close to the timeline of the June European Council Summit. They know the clock is ticking and that they have to get real about what kind of partnership arrangement they need on customs. We definitely need some movement on customs in order to deal with a lot of the concerns we have on the island of Ireland and in the future relationship between the UK and European Union. They have to get more real about it. It is make-your-mind-up time now in terms of what direction to go. The House of Commons will play a role in that as well. Some significant votes will take place there in the coming weeks.

On Mercosur and trade generally, I was asked a question at an IFA event last Friday night about the need to be careful with our carbon footprint regarding Mercosur. That is fine but, equally, the same logic should apply to what we do in Japan and China. We must be very careful. Trade is the essence of the negotiation but there will be winners and losers. Depending on the country one is dealing with, there will be offensive and defensive situations that will have to be tackled. If one is in a trading environment one might not get as much as one wants one day but one could get a lot more than one expected another day. That is what happened in Japan. We got a deal for 65,000 tonnes of beef. Nobody mentioned that because it is good news. We have opened links with the Chinese market, which will have an immediate effect rather than having to wait for ten years. If we do a deal in the morning with Mercosur it will take ten or 12 years before it is implemented. We have a bit of time in terms of the concerns that have been expressed. The sensitivity around beef is reflected in the mandate given by the Council of Ministers to the negotiators, and it has to be approved by every member state subsequently. There is no point in negotiating a deal without striking the right balance because it will subsequently be turned down. It would be a hell of a waste of time. The negotiations on Mercosur have been going on for 20 years. Elections are taking place in Brazil at the moment. The next round of negotiations with Mercosur countries will effectively take place at the end of May. I do not know whether the Brazilians will moderate their view sufficiently on cars or industrial products to satisfy some member states in the European Union. If there is no change there will be a standstill again for another while. That has been the way for a long time. I was here at the time of the last meeting and I thought there was sufficient momentum for something to happen. We certainly did not get what we asked for, and that is the reason there is no deal.

On trade generally, we are making a lot of progress on skimmed milk powder. Most people I hear talking about skimmed milk powder in storage are farmers and I think they should not be talking about it because they are allowing co-ops and other people that are buying milk to use it as an opportunity to reduce their price on the basis of there being an overhang in the market. We will handle this in a sensitive way that will not in any way impact on the price of milk for the farmer. If co-operatives or businesses that are buying milk want to use it as an excuse then they are wrong, because there is no excuse. We sold 24,000 tonnes last week. We did a deal for 30,000 tonnes with Mexico which will happen next year and we did a deal for 10,000 tonnes with Tunisia this week. We will move it, slowly but surely, into markets that are outside the European Union. The deals are very satisfactory.

Finally, I will make a couple of points on the equine sector. This is a very sensitive sector which is hugely important economically and in terms of employment for the country. I initiated discussions a year ago between the French, the UK and the Irish to try to see if we could mobilise together those three countries that have 90% of equine activity. It will be one of the issues to be discussed in any future trading arrangement.

That is progress but the matter will not be easy to solve because there are veterinary and animal health issues in the context of the movement of animals and decisions made at short notice about race meetings and so on. Members are all very familiar with these issues. The breeding of animals and all these movements will be tricky to deal with but the matter is on the agenda. It is on the British agenda, as well as the European Union agenda. That is a good step. I met the industry this week to discuss it further. We want to continue with the tripartite arrangement, if possible.

On young farmers, I have made it a specific objective of the new CAP that one will not get approval for one's plan from any member state unless one is doing something substantial for young farmers. I am saying to everybody that we will take a strong line on this. We will build on the excellent document produced by Macra na Feirme and the ideas therein in order to have them implemented at European level.

Taxation is, of course, a competence of the member state. We have nothing to do that in the European Union and we are unlikely to have for a long time to come. Taxation measures are matters for the members but we can add value at European Union level to force member states to do more. That includes opening up. We have to consider possibilities in regard to internal convergence and entitlements to afford some opportunities in terms of the national reserve and to build on that for young people. It is a serious problem that will not go away unless we take decisive action.

With regard to greening rules, we are going to abolish the existing greening arrangement. There will be, in Pillar 1 payments, what we call conditionality in regard to the environment and climate. We are considering what we can do to say to farmers that in return for the money they are getting, they have to do a little more for the environment and climate. I cannot say what we are going to do and how it will manifest itself yet but that is the principled position we have taken. The present greening system has not worked for the environment or farmers and therefore needs to be abolished. We will take the best of all possible worlds in terms of good agricultural and environmental condition, GAEC, and cross-compliance and will determine how we can proceed in a less complex way. I want to reduce the burden of the rules significantly so that if one is doing good work and signing up to a comprehensive plan under CAP, there is more responsibility on the member state and less in terms of the rules that come from Brussels on counting the trees, distances between trees, and distances from buffer strips and ecological focus areas. We have to get away from this prescriptive approach and give more flexibility. That is what I mean by flexibility. Ireland can meet these objectives in a different way from farmers in Spain or Greece. Therefore, we should give the flexibility.

On unfair trading practices, we have made a basic proposal. It can now be built upon by the member states and the Parliament. There is a lot of opposition to this from the big supermarkets and people interested in competition. We heard this debate in respect of the groceries order in 2006. We should never have got rid of it. We were told at the time by the pure economists that there would be a bonanza for consumers in terms of cheap food, that there would be no problem with the level playing pitch for farmers and that farmers would continue to receive a good income. This was a ridiculous argument. If one reads the Dáil debates from around 2006 — I do not have time to do so anymore — one will note they were very interesting and how wrong the assumptions were at the time in terms of what happened. There are people who are now very interested in public health issues. We allowed big supermarkets to open their doors to cheap drink products for young people. Nobody worries about the damage done to young people by the irresponsible action of abolishing the groceries order on the spurious grounds that it would give a fair boost to consumer spending and reduce the groceries bill of the consumer. This never happened. A study of this will show that consumer prices went up rather than down. Therefore, some of the advocates at the time should be brought back to the committee to learn what went wrong. It would be a very interesting debate. I am glad I got that off my chest.