Mr. Joe Condon:

I will make a couple of points. People are trying to put a finger on what the obstacles are. I have some figures here. Some 10,750 people applied for the REAP while there were 317 applications for 500 places on the organic farming scheme. On an average farm with mixed types of land, a farmer would get €5,000 per year for five years under the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, which is €25,000.

The administration costs of that are 2.5%. On a similar piece of land, a farmer would get €2,000 per annum on the organic farming scheme for the same area. Over five years that comes to €10,000. The administration cost is 25%. There is a factor of tenfold on those costs. Almost ten times the number of people applied to get into the results-based agri-environment pilot, REAP. Those figures marry up. There is definitely a problem here.

The last point in our submission highlighted the need for an independent review of the entire system. I call on the Chairman to instruct the committee members to push for an independent review. Those involved in organic farming and the organic representative bodies would probably appreciate this being looked at by an independent set of eyes. There is a great future in it if the obstacles can be eliminated. Beef and lamb farmers who have a business plan to directly sell their products have priority access to any organic scheme. At the moment there is an obstacle to those people getting in. They do not score very high on the scoring matrix. That may also answer the question.

There has been reference here to a sort of monopoly on slaughtering. This would take a lot of that action away. A person would find their own butcher and sell locally at the local farmers' market or direct sell online or wherever. There are opportunities and I believe if there is a review those solutions can be proposed then. Instead of faulting the actions and the things that are there at the moment, we need to find a way around them through this review.