Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will ask Mr. Doyle to come in on the export of live animals to the UK market. I will ask Ms Sheridan to come in on the Senator's second point about parts for machinery and the challenges in that regard.

The Senator's third point related to the CAP and where it is at. A general approach was agreed both by the EU Council of Ministers and by the European Parliament on what the next seven-year CAP programme should look like. It is currently in a trilogue process between the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission, to finalise the programme for the next seven years. Hopefully, that process will conclude soon.

We will have to submit our national CAP strategic plan to the Commission by 1 January next year. This year is going to be important in developing our strategic plan. I will engage in great depth with farming organisations and farming representatives over the next number of months on the design and nature of our plan. There will then be public consultation on it in the second half of the year before we submit it at European level.

Once our national strategic CAP plan is approved, including the nature and type of scheme in Pillar 2 and the nature of our eco scheme, which will be a requirement under Pillar 1, 2022 will be about developing and preparing for those schemes, getting information out to farmers and working with them to prepare for the schemes to be in place from January 2023 when the new CAP will go live. It will be a five-year programme, given that 1 January 2023 will be approximately two years later than this month, which was when the programme was due to kick off. There will now be a two-year transition period, and I have announced that many of the outgoing schemes will be continued throughout that time to ensure there is no impact on farm incomes as we await the start of the new CAP.

I might ask Mr. Doyle to speak on the live export of animals, including to Britain.