Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

I will express my own view on this, which is that we have to provide support for the incomes of people living in rural areas who are engaged in agricultural activity. That will involve targeted supports for various kinds of livestock. We do that. We have more targeted supports for beef and sheep than we have ever had before. The sheep payment has gone up to €20 a head. That is something for which the farm bodies had asked for a long time. We have other options for them. We have very generous organic payments for many people whose systems are on the edge of being organic anyway. We have supports in that regard that may suit people if they think about it. The number of farmers in organics has tripled. We have environmental schemes that again suit people along the west coast and many people with suckler-type farms. The supports are there. We have a complicated system. There is no doubt about that.

Thinking about the evolution of the CAP, there was one great simplification when we went to what was virtually a single farm payment. That replaced about ten schemes. That was controversial enough at the time, but it was simple. We decoupled and paid per hectare. We now have an increasing number of schemes and have to think about what simplification means. To be honest, my blood runs cold when I hear the word "simplification" at EU level because we are not good at it. On the other hand, we have a trend towards results-based schemes. This means that you have to measure the results of what you are doing. We have a shift towards environmental schemes. Again, you are looking at the outcomes for those. We have an increasing number of schemes and we are expecting new proposals to be published in the middle of next year. The next time around, we will have to think about what simplification means. We are reflecting on that in the Department in a very active way at the moment. We are just about getting used to this system now.