Mr. John Keane:

I thank Deputy Browne for his question, the first part of which was in regard to the young farmers' perspective and the perspective on costs. The biggest concern for our members is in regard to the use of the regulations in this context. In 24 months' time grant-aid support will no longer be provided to a cohort of farmers who do not fall within the requirements. Those farmers who fall outside of the requirements will not be eligible for grant-aid support under the regulations because the regulations state that is law. The concern from our young farmers' point of view is the capacity to meet those requirements in the stated short space of 24 months. A huge proportion of our members have invested significant sums of money under TAMS - €200 million overall in the past five years - in terms of on-farm infrastructures, slurry storage and improving their environmental efficiencies on-farm. Some of them have significant repayments to meet. They are very happy that they will be able to meet those repayments under the current set of proposals to which they are working at farm level, but they are concerned that these proposals, if adopted, coupled with the measures that will reduce the number of livestock numbers which they can carry, which will reduce their productive efficiency, will have a major impact on them being able to meet their repayments right now and may mean they will not be able to meet the requirements suggested under these proposals to make themselves compliant.

From the traditionalist point of view and where the frustration for our members is, over the past number of years the best advice for young farmers starting up has been to invest in cows and grass. That is where our most significant returns are going to come from. That is where the viability of a business will come from. It has been proven that the most efficient and viable place for our farmers to invest is in cows and grass. The question that arises now is, if these regulations are brought in, and in order for a farmer to start-out, he or she must inform us of all the infrastructure invested in, will young farmers have the necessary amount of investment to start-up a business on day one, including investment in all of the slurry storage capacity and compliance measures, as opposed to investing in cows and grass which will provide a return on the investment quite quickly, and investing in all of the slurry storage capacity and the other compliance measures? Our young farmers think that will not necessarily be feasible.

From the Minister's point of view and a costing point of view from within the Department, we would have significant concerns about the proposals in front of us in terms of CAP.

The level of ring-fenced funding being proposed for young farmers under CAP and the Department's lack of ambition in terms of meeting the minimum level that is being set or setting the level higher do not give us great encouragement that the Department will listen to us on measures to support young farmers in this context as we move forward. We had engagements last week and in previous weeks with the Department on this issue. We welcome further engagement with it. While we acknowledge the role TAMS has played over the period of the current CAP, the current proposals, which are indicative of what is going on in CAP for young farmers, and the omission of some key interventions do not inspire us with huge confidence that the needs and requirements of young farmers will be met in other parts of the regulations. That is a major concern from our point of view.