Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

That is a good question. Initially we assumed that if one had a herd number one was an active farmer. I recall that somebody in the Deputy's county wrote to the Department complaining that a person in receipt of the rural social scheme was not a farmer, that the herd number was inactive and long dead. The person had no cattle or sheep but had the herd number. That issue posed a dilemma. Reluctantly, the criteria had to be changed, and we had to specify that the person had to be an active farmer.

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