Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all our guests for attending. I give a special welcome to Mr. Keane. This is his first meeting in his capacity as president of Macra na Feirme and I wish him the best.

I have two questions and if the witnesses have time to touch on them over the course of the meeting, it would be great. Otherwise, there can be written responses afterwards. First, we heard Mr. Keane speak about Macra na Feirme's proposals for supporting newer and younger entrants into the sector. Could the other organisations articulate if they have proposals to do that? The second question relates to the debate about the genuine farmer. Do the organisations have definitions of a "genuine" farmer? That might be helpful to the committee in its future deliberations. For example, is the definition in terms of stocking rates that is in place for the areas of natural constraint, ANC, scheme a sufficient barometer in that regard?

On the substance of what we are discussing here, which is essentially the distribution of CAP funds, my view, and I am interested to hear if the organisations share this view, is that the fundamental problem we have is the EU budget itself. I believe all the organisations and their members were sold out. The Government agreed to a fundamentally bad deal that saw the proportion allocated to CAP reduced from 37% to 30% of the overall budget. At the same time, we will contribute billions of euro more in net terms to that EU budget. Do the witnesses accept that therein lies the fundamental problem?

With regard to the issues in respect of redistribution measures, I am struck by a line in the opening statement from the ICMSA. It says: "Basing a policy on a payment per hectare is very crude ...". Do the witnesses accept that basing payments on production levels in 2001 is also crude and that another way had to be found? When discussing redistribution measures, we have heard their views on convergence. I have met with a number of the organisations and Irish Government officials over many years to discuss CAP funding and every time convergence was mentioned the case of farmers with small holdings but high entitlements was cited. I was therefore surprised that the witnesses were not jumping for joy when the front-loaded CRISS payment was proposed at EU level, because that would alleviate the concerns of those farmers in some way. Do they support such a measure for precisely those farmers who have been at the forefront of so many concerns over the past number of years? Then there is the issue of capping. I welcome that the ICMSA in its opening statement, and the INHFA has also alluded to this, supports a payment upper limit of €60,000 without any loopholes. I am interested to hear if the other organisations support such a proposition.

We are dealing with a scenario in which there is a fundamental inequality in the CAP payment system in Ireland. Do the witnesses accept that? Mr. Cullinan said that he accepts there is unfairness in the CAP system. Do the witnesses accept that there is a problem when there has never been a coherent proposal put forward by the Irish Government or any of the main established farm organisations on how to address the inequality and unfairness in the system? Let us be clear about it. At present, there are young farmers breaking their backs working full time on their land and they receive €180 per hectare in Pillar 1 CAP payments. At the same time, there are people sitting on their backsides, with their land leased out, receiving several multiples of that in payments that are based on the production they were involved in 20 years ago. For me, that is fundamentally unfair. Unless we are able to put forward proposals for dealing with it, we do not have credibility in simply opposing the three measures of convergence, front-loading and capping that have been set out to address it. I want the organisations to outline their positions for addressing the inequality and unfairness that have allowed, as has been said, the Larry Goodmans and sheikhs of this world and others to draw down hundreds of thousands of euro, and millions of euro over the term of a CAP, while most of the farmers the witnesses represent are struggling to make ends meet. We must have definitive proposals on how to address that, and I am interested in hearing them.

I note that the IFA is due to protest on Friday. I do not like to be critical of any farm organisation as I work with all farm organisations, but in the context of the talks on CAP the IFA is essentially protesting in support of the Government's position in the talks. To return to my opening point with regard to the EU budget, with the benefit of hindsight would it not have been more appropriate and would we not have been able to ensure that all the farm organisations would have come together if action had been taken and tractors brought onto the streets at the time the EU budget was being agreed? Rather than protesting in support of the Government, they would have come out against the sell-out by the Government and the EU Commissioner at the time, who facilitated the position we are in now. We are essentially fighting over the distribution of a smaller CAP cake.

I will leave it at that.