Mr. Tadhg Buckley:

I will make one point on redistribution, which was raised earlier by Deputy Carthy. We might look at farmers with average-sized land. Many farmers with small landholdings are being significantly impacted by redistribution. Take, for instance, the example of a farmer with 35 ha who had a single farm payment of €12,500 in 2014, which is not a big payment. That farmer's single farm payment dropped to €10,500 in 2019. It will drop to €7,000 in 2026, with eco-schemes at 25%. If the farmer manages to qualify for eco-schemes, that would bring the payment up to €9,260. There may be a cost incurred in complying with eco-schemes, however. That farmer, who is farming 86 acres, therefore, will take a significant hit in terms of the single farm payment.

These are not farmers with huge landholdings. They are farmers with average-sized land who are farming with entitlements that are slightly above average.

The core issue, and I think Deputy Carthy touched upon this earlier, goes back to the size of EU budget. The size of the EU budget, set as what it was, has created real challenges when it comes to redistribution. When we are looking at convergence, which is now increasing to a minimum of 75%, and we also have eco-schemes, we need to understand the economic impact of those two forms first before we can make an informed decision on what the CRISS is going to look like. As a previous contributor said, we do not have any figures from the Department on what CRISS is going to look like. In modelling that was prepared in 2019, CRISS was not even modelled. Our figures show that if 30 ha were topped up, it would come up at around €45. If you take farmers with 35 ha and a €12,500 single payment going down to €7,000, they will gain nothing under CRISS. It will be more or less the same.

We are saying we first need to understand the impact on payments for convergence and eco-schemes before we make decisions. That is why we think from the perspective of CRISS that it should remain optional for member states. Let us get the economic analysis from our Department first to see the impact is going to have. Then we can make an informed decision about whether we should introduce it or at what sort of levels it should be introduced. Trying to do something when we are completely in the dark, in our view, from an economic perspective, is not a sensible thing to do at the moment.