Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue which is indeed topical. During the past 12 months my Department and I have been active in raising the question of an adjustment to the milk quota regime at political, official and Commission level and have made determined efforts to secure a soft landing for all member states in the lead-up to milk quota abolition in 2015. I have discussed the matter extensively with other EU agriculture Ministers, including in bilateral meetings with my Danish, French, German, Estonian and UK counterparts. Furthermore, officials from my Department have raised the issue at every available opportunity at appropriate EU meetings in the past eight months or so and at bilateral meetings with other member states.

Among the options discussed with regard to a soft landing were the front-loading of the remaining quota increases between now and 2015, a reduction in super-levy fines, a further reduction in butterfat correction levels and a EU flexi-milk arrangement which would operate provided EU production overall was within quota. Most attention was focused on butterfat correction. In December a coalition of member states involving Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Cyprus formally put a specific proposal to the Special Committee on Agriculture for an adjustment to the butterfat correction mechanism. That would have given us flexibility of about 1.5% in our quota. Unfortunately, the Commission has consistently resisted attempts to reconsider this issue, as it has resisted attempts to revisit the outcome of the 2008 CAP health check agreement in an overall sense. This is something to which the previous Government signed up, but, unfortunately, it has not worked out.

The extent of the difficulties in terms of the potential for super-levy fines this year was confirmed today on the front of the Farming section of the Irish Independent. It was reported that Copa-Cogeca had secured agreement on a common position calling for a reduction in butterfat adjustment levels. It seems, however, that this is not the case; unfortunately, the report is not accurate, according to my information.

It is important to address the particular question the Deputy asked. This is not the first time I have addressed it, as he has spoken on this issue before. If we had been able to establish a bilateral arrangement with the United Kingdom under which we could use unused quota from Northern Ireland, we would have done it months ago. Unfortunately, however, such an arrangement cannot be made between member states. We have an agreed health check policy that was supposed to provide a soft landing for countries in advance of 2015, but it is certainly not achieving this for at least five countries within the European Union. We will have a review of that soft landing policy towards the end of the year which the Commission will be facilitating and I will have an opportunity to raise all these issues again. In the meantime, we are trying to achieve agreement on a butterfat correction which would at least allow some flexibility and help to keep us within quota, but it has not been possible to get agreement on it either, mainly because France and Germany are opposed to it.

In terms of lobbying, there is a need to put together a strong coalition in order that the concerns of countries such as Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Cyprus, with a number of others, are taken seriously. If it were as easy as simply saying, "Farmers in the UK are not using their full quota, and we need more quota, so we can just take some of theirs," we would have done this long ago. Unfortunately, it is not legally possible to do it. As much as many of us in this House would like Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic of Ireland, it is not. It is considered to be a separate jurisdiction and countries cannot transfer national quota across borders. I would like us to be able to do this, but it is not possible. I will continue to raise this issue - in fact, at my next Council meeting I intend to raise it under the heading of any other business - and we will continue to push for more flexibility.

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