Mr. Gabriel Gilmartin:

I will go through the points made. Senator Ó Domhnaill referred to the disadvantaged areas. I agree with everything Senator Comiskey said. It started with 12 counties and was then expanded. There are only very obvious places where a saving can be made, although I do not know how much it would be. The disadvantaged area payment originated as a payment for cattle and sheep farmers. At present, there is a minimum and maximum stock rate and there are retrospective considerations and so forth. However, nobody looked at why seven donkeys will get the same payment as seven suckler cows in Mayo, Donegal, Leitrim or Clare. Why are they not dropped out of the scheme? Why are the hobby people who are breeding Connemara ponies, for which there are no big markets, and who are not producing food in the scheme? A certain amount of savings can be made there. The disadvantaged areas scheme got too big. Everybody got a slice of the cake. In pillar 2 of the next round of the Common Agricultural Policy there must be a specific scheme put in place for people with marginal land in the poorer areas of the country. That goes back to what the original disadvantaged areas scheme was for. For heaven's sake, make the representation and drop the donkeys and horses from it. A significant saving can be made there. In Pillar 2 there must be a separate scheme for the hill areas where people have low payment after taking a huge cut in disadvantaged area payment and where the REPS payment is gone.

In our view limiting or putting a ceiling on the suckler welfare scheme will not work. The scheme is working very well and many people participate in it. More importantly, there is a huge amount of information being collected by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, ICBF, on breeding, calving difficulties, meat yield and so forth. We should keep our hands off it. It has already been cut by 50%, so it should not be cut again. I realise the average cow herd in Ireland is approximately 18 but it is a great deal more than that for the average full-time farmer. It would also hit the most vulnerable people.