Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Commission wants to answer the Deputy's question on what is disadvantaged and what is not. Instead of taking the approach used in the past, whereby the criteria were very general and a line was drawn splitting the country, biophysical criteria will be used and measured in a scientific way to qualify for a disadvantaged area payment. These criteria include soil type, moisture, temperature, depth and stoniness. In principle, we agree with this approach. The problem is in its practical implementation, which will not be easy because all of the 130,000 farms which could potentially qualify must be measured, which is very difficult to do.

This has been kicked into the Common Agricultural Policy reform process, although it was an issue under discussion before that process began. It will be very divisive because many countries such as Ireland have many farms in disadvantaged areas or less favoured areas. They want to retain the classification system because payments can be drawn down for those farms. Therefore, this is a very difficult political issue. If we do not address it, we will have to start breaking up parishes by separating farmers with disadvantaged land from those without it. We need to find a compromise that is both practical and workable and which will have the maximum number of farmers in Ireland receiving payments for having to farm in disadvantaged areas.

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