Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Commissioner, our former colleague, back to the Oireachtas and wish him well in his endeavours in the future.

Simplification of the CAP is a significant issue. Every year when a new CAP is negotiated, we look for less bureaucracy, but, unfortunately, we always seem to get more. This tends to irritate many of those involved in the agricultural community. Will decreasing bureaucracy be a priority in the mid-term review and the future?

Senator Pat O'Neill mentioned inspections and penalties. Again, these issues are a source of irritation for the agricultural community. Is a more streamlined version of the CAP on the horizon or will it be part of discussions to be held? Many farmers live in fear of the knock on the door, the letter in the post or the unannounced inspection. The single farm or basic payment makes up a large part of a farmer's income and farmers are concerned that it may not be available in the future if, for some trivial reason, they are not in compliance with the increasing number of regulations.

A big issue in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe is the relationship between primary producers and supermarkets. The committee did some work on this issue two years ago when it published a report on it. In England there is an independent arbitrator to deal with the issue. Does the Commissioner have any knowledge of how that system works or does he believe we need a European statutory code of conduct? As he is probably aware, a new Competition and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law about a year ago, but it has not been brought into force because regulations have yet to be introduced. There is a very uneasy relationship between producers, retailers and supermarkets here, but does the Commissioner believe that, in order to have greater transparency, European legislation is required to fit in with what we have in place?

It was very welcome that milk quotas were abolished at the end of March. We suggested a fairly cautious approach in Ireland but the superlevy has put a bit of a dampener on our progress and this is one of the biggest challenges in the short term. Mr. Hogan outlined the strategy regarding the payment of penalties. Is there any possibility of a softer landing?

The age profile of farmers is not just an Irish issue but a Europe-wide one. Only 7% of Irish farmers are under 35 and more farmers are over 80 years of age than under 35, which is a damning statistic. Last week a group calling themselves the forgotten farmers were before the committee. There is a legacy issue in that there are some 3,500 of these farmers who, in years gone by, did not receive payment and now find it very difficult to compete against those who receive single farm payments in regard to leasing and renting land and so forth. Most of them are young farmers under 40 years of age and still do not qualify for anything. Is there any possibility they could be facilitated in the future?

Mr. Hogan said there was a good outlook for the beef trade although it is a very volatile sector. Can anything be put in place to ensure the ups and downs are addressed so that in the event of a bad year, and there are more bad years than good years, the blow to farmers in the sector can be softened?