Mr. Michael Moloney:

The BISS has been carried forward from the basic payments scheme, which started with the single-payment scheme, SPS. I am going back to decoupling in 2005. Basically, farmers have entitlements. It depends on the entitlements a farmer has and their value. If a farmer has 50 entitlements, he or she must have 50 ha of land - whatever they are valued at - that is his or her payment. If a farmer only has 20 ha or 50 ha but only ten entitlements, that farmer is only paid on those ten entitlements for BISS. However, for an area of natural constraint, ANC, a farmer does not have any entitlement. It is paid up to 34 ha. If a farmer has 34 ha, he or she receives the maximum. There are different rates of payment depending on the categorisation of the farmer's land. The CRISS is paid on 30 ha. It does not matter whether a farmer has 330 ha, he or she will be paid on 30 ha. It is front-loading, in effect, of a farmer's first 30 ha. It has an impact on farmers with 30 ha, who receive the maximum. There are some other schemes, such as the sheep improvement scheme, which is based on a farmer's reference numbers from the census. The suckler carbon efficiency programme, SCEP, is based on a farmer's area. It is also animal-based to establish a farmer's reference period, as such. BISS was based on the entitlements, which was an average of the years 0001 to 02. Obviously, we then have convergence, which brings the entitlements down if they are over the average and brings them up if they are below the average, to 85% by 2026.