Mr. Fran Morrin:

The Deputy asked a question about front-loading. The new regulations propose quite a degree of flexibility around front-loading. One could load the first 10 ha or hectares five to 20 and so on. There is quite a lot of flexibility. One of the technical challenges associated with it is that a large proportion of farmers have different values or sets of entitlement values. There might be one set of entitlement, for example ten entitlements at €110 and another set at €156 and so on. There is a question to be answered there if we do front-load, how do we do it? Which values should be loaded? Is it the average or the highest? The possibility is there to do it.

I will address some of the concerns various members raised about protecting medium sized farms. The proposals allow for a redistributive programme as part of Pillar 1, specifically refers to the redistribution of income from large farms to small and medium sized farms. We will be looking very closely at how we do it.