Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister and his officials for coming in. I will touch on two points, some aspects of which have already been covered. I welcome the improvement for the sheep sector, which was a big issue for us last year. The Department has made significant progress on it. We are getting the payment up to the equivalent of €20 per ewe. While it is very positive, I still encourage the Minister to try to get to €25, if there is any capacity to do so over the course of the year.

I do not see any indication there will be an upsurge in the sheep sector, so it will be another challenging year, notwithstanding the strong supports the Government delivered for them.

The Minister already touched on my second point but it is an important issue for me and many of the marginal farmers operating in my part of the country. They would say they are all marginal farmers, but anyway, I refer to the ACRES 2 scheme. I commend the Minister on what he did on ACRES 1 last year. He ensured that all farmers were included and he has been quite strident in his comments on this today. Similar to what Deputy Kerrane said, we have 9,200 applications to the scheme for farmers in transition, particularly marginal farmers who have been heavily suckler, labour and stock-intensive. We need those farmers to work with us and we need them to move to a new completely revolutionised income model in the way they operate and farm. It would seismic move by the Minister if we were able to follow through on last year’s commitment and include all the applicants. If all eligible applicants out of the 9,200 could be included in the scheme, it would be an important message to deliver to the farming community, which is facing many challenges at the moment.