Mr. Cormac McGann:

The first question was really why now for this particular simplification package. This is actually the second one and it has been part of a longer process that the Commission has been running since the start of this CAP. Some emergency measures were brought in during the first year of the CAP. Last year we had the omnibus simplification, derogating farmers on less than 10 ha from controls for conditionality. This is the next step in the process, additional measures that can be introduced within the current CAP for simplification. As to how they come up with what is in it, a long public consultation has been going on which the Commission has been running over the past two years. There were open public consultations where anybody could fill in the survey. There were expert interviews, including with members of our Department as well as the IFA and other experts in Ireland and across the European Union. There is also the European CAP network, which has been running thematic expert working groups to work through the problems, identify where they are and put forward solutions.

On the beehives, that is just one of the many requests that have come from those stakeholder consultations, with people asking for more flexibility in how the current suite of tools are operated. People who are currently bound to take their payments on an area basis are saying it would be useful if they could make the payments per livestock unit or per beehive for certain types of intervention. That is the reason behind it. I hope that is helpful.