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

What we have proposed as an alternative to the Commission proposal would essentially mean the higher one's payments, the more one would lose, while the lower one's payments, the more one would gain in the redistribution, which would be fair. Farmers with very high payments would lose one quarter of their payments, while those with very low payments would probably see their payments quadruple in some cases. I cannot give the Deputy exact figures, but they vary considerably, depending on the current level of payment.

I am the first to concede that there is a need for significant redistribution. There are plenty of farmers who have been given a raw deal in respect of the reference years and the building of entitlements over a period of time and they need and will receive a significant increase in their payments. The farmers with stacked payments who have built very large entitlements must pay for this. If we were to move on the lines the Commission has proposed which would involve pushing everybody into an average payment of about €270 per hectare over a relatively short period of time, some farmers would receive 30% of what they are currently receiving, while others would receive massive increases for doing very little.

This is an important point. We are trying to introduce a fair model to redistribute a significant amount of money and, at the same time, not to put many active farmers who have been relying on medium to high payments out of business. It is important to say we will not achieve the proposal I have sold around the country at public meetings.

It will not be possible to achieve that. We will achieve a compromise between that and the Commission's proposals. That is how compromise works. It was important for me to take a strong position to limit the amount of money being redistributed so that we could agree a compromise position acceptable to everyone. That is what we are working to achieve. On the question of capping, I will not commit myself to any particular figure. It was agreed by the Heads of State last week in the multi-annual financial framework, MFF, discussions that countries would be allowed to introduce a voluntary cap. We do not yet know whether we will be able to set that cap at whatever rate we wish it to be set. We will not know the answer until the end of June.

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