Mr. Eddie Punch:

I thank the Chair. I will deal with a few of the points. First, we set a €60,000 cap. It is not that we like caps, but it is that the average payment is €9,000 per farmer. In a world where we cannot even pay a living wage to the average farmer, it is illogical in our view that if you give one farmer €60,000, you would also give that farmer extra money to hire in labour. The marketplace and the taxation system have to cover the cost of hired-in labour.

In terms of young farmers, we have always supported the national reserve and the 25% top-up. We would say there needs to be consideration given to young farmers who do not want to get into dairying. Dairying is a logical and good choice for some young farmers, but for a lot of our members, who are young folk who are getting into farming, because of fragmented holdings, land quality, or the sheer risk investing hundreds of thousands in new milking facilities, they should be given options to farm in sucklers, sheep, or tillage, as an alternative to the high capital investment in dairying. That is where we want to see, for example, an agri-environment scheme is attractive to young people starting out and can pay up to €15,000, for example.

In terms of the definition of "genuine farmer", we have said clearly there must be an upper limit on the number of years a farmer can lease out entitlements. We accept that people will lease out entitlement in the short term, because of illness, or some issues like that, and there are people who need to lease in entitlements, but prolonged, by which we mean for seven years or more, leasing out of entitlements has got to stop. If nothing else happens, we need to form an agreed position on this around this and other tables. Also on the genuine farmer, we have said the areas of natural constraint, ANC, minimum stocking rates should apply and the donkeys should be ruled out.

In terms of getting our members' views, we have asked them through various formats. We are using, for example, WhatsApp and messaging for people to give their feedback on various issues. Obviously, that is more of a thing with Covid-19, but we hope also to go back to real engagement with people around the table. In general, the CRISS, the convergence, and all of these issues are substantially linked to the EU looking for farmers to do more and more for less and less. However, there is a €750 billion Next Generation EU, NGEU, piece, which was agreed as part of the EU budget negotiations. The farming and natural resources sectors across all of Europe got a mere €17.5 billion from that, €10 billion of which was for just transition and €7.5 billion to top up rural development funding. We think that is inadequate. We think Ireland's share of it is smaller still.

If we come back to these contentious issues, we have to get more money into the budget. The carbon €1.5 billion that was a programme for Government agreement needs to be extra money over and above the co-financing obligation that will be part of Pillar 2.

We need to ensure also we are fighting as part of this negotiation. Whether the eco-scheme is set at 25% or 30% is akin to moving the deckchairs as it is playing around with figures. We need to get more money into the schemes and if we want CRISS, we need more money to top that up. If we want to have a fairer CAP, we need more money for the farmers who are most vulnerable to the current convergence model, and in our view those are cattle, suckler, sheep and tillage farmers. They are the people who need more money out of this and we have to find a way of doing that quickly.