Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

I never had the honour of being on the European Committee of the Regions. I offer a warm welcome to Ms Tütt and the other witnesses and thank them for appearing before the committee. I agree with Deputy Lahart. We are all out there to grab as much money as we can but where this money is coming from is not generally known by the general public. It is important that this message is put across. How we do this is probably the way suggested by the witnesses - maybe with eight people responsible for getting that message to the local authorities or possibly attending local authority meetings to let them know what is happening.

The presentation mentioned something that concerns me greatly as a TD who represents a very rural constituency. The CAP being put into the one bag and competing for funding against all the other organisations mentioned. I am very worried about that. It needs to be addressed. We need to do everything we can to ensure this does not happen because if that happens, the farmers of this country will lose a lot of money. How can the Dáil and the Government help the Irish delegation in its case to try to ensure that this does not happen because it would have serious repercussions? The farming community is surviving. It had a good year this year but farmers had bad years for the past four or five years. They are struggling to survive and what is keeping the family farm alive today is the money that comes from Brussels. There is no doubt about that. I am very concerned about that and I would like to find out what we can do as a Government and a Dáil to ensure this does not happen.