Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As Mr. McCormack will have seen in his local area, there are farmers with 80 or 90 cows who are farming under the derogation. They are not going near the derogation and they farm under the 170 threshold. Mr. McCormack is right that they are now being put into an awkward position by going from 80 or 85 cows to 105 cows, depending on the output of the cow. That is going to affect smaller farms. An exception should be made for smaller farms. Given some of the figures I have provided, we need to look hard at farms with 400, 500 and 600 cows if they are on derogation. A living is what we want to make out of farming, not a multinational company.

On the derogation, is 20% not an awfully high figure? I tallied up the figures and the derogation covers about 300,000 cows. How many cows would be taken out if the derogation was removed? Does Mr. McCormack have any idea? A figure of between 15% and 20% was mentioned. I tallied this up. If there are 1.5 million dairy cows in the country, 10% of that is 150,000 cows.