Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)

Is there not a huge difficulty with putting in place a retrospective basis for this scheme by using 2011 stocking densities to qualify for a 2012 scheme? As for productive farmers, I acknowledge at the outset that farming production must be increased and so on. However, people are living in great difficulty in respect of land constraint, peripheral regions, quality of land and so forth. They have lost the rural environment protection scheme, REPS. Moreover, the agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, is not being reopened this year and the disadvantaged areas scheme is coupled with that. These schemes were not just about farming but also provided environmental benefits.

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