Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)
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I thank Mr. Gleeson and his colleagues. I do not envy them their job. They are coming in here in the midst of negotiations and they are doing their best, similar to the Brexit scenario. All they can do is their best because this will change. They are only giving us the current position.

The newly proposed CAP has a number of seminal and worthy objectives, including the old objectives of supporting viable farm incomes and achieving food security, but I concur with Deputy Cahill that we all want to see the position of the farmers in the value food chain. There arises the question of how the distribution of payments can achieve the objective of ensuring that smaller and medium-sized farms are saved and sustained in the future. Such farms are critical in rural Ireland. It is hard to justify large corporate farmers getting significant sums when they are the ones who can release cattle onto the market when it suits them and depress prices at a critical time. I constantly raised the reduction of farm payments up to €60,000. Of course, we were deemed Communists in the Labour Party for suggesting this but now the more mainstream Fianna Fáil are-----