Mr. Pat McCormack:

I thank Deputy Carthy for the question. It is a long time since I first met the Deputy. He was a Member of the European Parliament at the time and the topic of significance on the agenda to me on the day was the fact that the small family farm structure was losing out under convergence. I dealt with that matter in answer to Senator Daly's question.

I thank Deputy Carthy for his acknowledgement that we had courage to put a figure on a cap. In that context, we felt, after a great deal of discussion, that €60,000 would be a reasonable. That would afford some level of distribution but we have to examine the envelope available to the people earning below the national average. In the last round of CAP reform, negotiations we saw people with single farm payments of between €10,000 and €12,000 having their payments cut while those on €40,000, €50,000 and €60,000 got increases. We need to keep that in mind also.

Another contributor mentioned that dairy farmers are more profitable. The facts are - and this was alluded to by the same speaker - that other sectors are in a position to get income from off-farm employment. In the vast majority of cases, dairy farming is very much a full-time job. Direct payments in challenging years - and we are in a time of volatility - have contributed up to 37% of overall income on dairy farms. By no means should members be of the view that dairy farmers can survive without the single farm payment or any cut to the payment. That cannot happen, irrespective of whether it hovers between 20% and 37%.

There is a lot of discussion about non-productive land but the reality is that for the past five to seven years, come the middle of October, the one issue that keeps the ICMSA office extremely busy is people being penalised for having rushes, dock leaves or habitats. The committee's next forum in an hour's time is with officials from the Department. We need to have them on board to ensure that farmers are not penalised if they have those habitats.

Equally, we need to see environmental schemes under Pillar 2 that are available and attractive to the family dairy farm units. As we move forward, the more farmers we get into environmental schemes under Pillar 2, the better. There was a great grá, and I know it was the initial scheme, for the old style rural environment protection scheme, REPS. When this Government was formed, there was a good deal of hope that we would see a scheme similar to that. Unfortunately, we have not seen that in the pilot scheme that has been launched, which is going to be very targeted. We need to see environmental schemes that attract all farmers, including commercial and dairy farmers.