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

I do not propose to make any absolutes today in terms of commitments because I believe that would make a farce of the consultation process. Deputies will be aware of my views on most of these issues, which may or may not change following conclusion of the consultation process. I would be very slow to introduce a reduction coefficient to parts of the country. The reason Ireland fought hard for acceptance of the redistribution model is because we want to try to keep the entire country under the same payment model rather than take money from people because they farm in mountainous areas and so on. I am not inclined to that unless there are very persuasive arguments to do so. The same reasoning would apply to breaking Ireland up into different regions and giving different payments per hectare within different regions. I believe that would cause a great deal of division within Irish agriculture and I do not want to do that unless I have to. I think that is unlikely to happen but one cannot rule anything out.

On variable greening, we have made the case that if one is to incentivise farmers to adopt the new greening measures, those who receive the highest payments - generally, the most productive farmers - need to be offered an incentive to abide by the greening measures. This should be done by linking the payment to their single farm payment. To do otherwise could result in farmers on high single farm payments receiving a very small greening payment. This would have little, if any, incentive attached to it if the amount were small. On the other hand, a farmer on a low single farm payment who had a much higher greening payment in percentage terms would have a much stronger incentive to comply with the greening criteria. It makes more sense to link the greening and single farm payments. Setting the level of the former at 30% of the latter creates an incentive for every farmer to comply.

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