Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

Exactly. I am glad the question was tabled because we had a very useful visit from Commissioner Ciolos a number of weeks ago. Deputies Michael Moynihan and Michael Colreavy made a number of extremely relevant points to the Commissioner during the Joint Committee on Communications, Natural Resources and Agriculture's meeting with him. I had an opportunity to spend approximately three hours with the Commissioner during which time we discussed various matters, both on and off the record. I took the opportunity to outline to him Ireland's main concerns about this matter, the first of which is the need to ensure the budget proposed by the Commission for the CAP should remain intact as we move towards making a decision on the multi-annual financial framework, that is, the EU budget. There are still countries which would like the CAP budget to be cut significantly. We must ensure, at a senior Government level, that this does not happen.

Ireland also has concerns on the reference year issue. Many farmers are also concerned about this matter which is having an impact on the land rental market, in particular. It will continue to have such an impact between now and 2014 if clarity is not forthcoming. The Commissioner now understands this issue, but he continues to maintain many other countries do not appear to have a difficulty with it. He wants to be as concise as possible in determining a reference year. We are going to work together to try to arrive at a solution which will give certainty to the rental market before the end of the year.

I outlined to the Commissioner our concerns about greening. There should not be a separate greening payment. We should build on the cross-compliance structures already in place rather than introducing an entirely new layer of bureaucracy, form-filling and inspections in respect of a separate top-up payment. However, the Commissioner is wedded to the idea of introducing a separate greening payment and that was the mechanism he used to obtain agreement from the Commission in maintaining the budget for the CAP. He obtained that agreement by stating direct payments would effectively be cut by 30% and that a 30% top-up payment directly related to the greening of the CAP would be provided.

The distribution of single farm or direct payments within Ireland is the key issue for us. We discussed this matter in the context of an earlier question. We need to achieve a result in this matter because the last thing we want is for the Irish Presidency to be obliged to focus on significant problems this country might have with the CAP proposals rather than on trying to achieve consensus among member states. We will work intensively with the Commission to try to arrive at a compromise solution which will assist us in achieving our goals.

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