Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

What I can say is that at one stage when we had that scheme we did an economic evaluation of it and the conclusion was that essentially there was a fair bit of dead weight in it. In other words, we were funding people who were on the cusp of doing this anyway. One of the issues that occurs to me is that I think it was designed to get people who are over 55 out of the system. Forgive me for thinking now that 55 is not as old as I used to think it was. The demographic issue in farming is not about 55 year olds, without prejudice to the competence of such people, and I am heading in that direction myself. The focus we put in the previous CAP was on encouraging young people. We had a number of incentives for young people. I accept there is great reluctance among older farmers to pass down their land and get out. This is something we must reflect on in the next CAP. In doing so we must also reflect on the outcome of our previous study, which showed we were paying people for something that might have happened anyway and it was not really that effective.

There was another issue, which is that once people reached the age of 66 the payment was subtracted from the old age pension. There were all kinds of complexities with the old system that limited its effectiveness. I accept it is an issue. We still have the demographic issue and young farmers are saying they are finding it difficult to get land from older farmers. This is partly attributable to alternative uses for land and dairy expansion. There are many reasons for it. It is an issue on which we must reflect.