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

They are easy questions to answer. First of all, there will be a minimum payment. One of the big negotiating issues with the Commission during the six months of our Presidency was around this mandatory minimum payment; it is not voluntary. In any country, whatever the average payment, if that country is not going to go to a flat rate payment model, as the Commission would like, and if that country is going to introduce the convergence model that Ireland designed and for which it managed to get support, under that model the country must ensure no farmer getting a direct payment gets less than 60% of the average payment in that country. That is a welcome development. If that figure had been too high, I believe it would have posed significant problems in Ireland and I reckon 60% is approximately the right figure. This means that the 60% figure will be somewhere between €145 and €150 per hectare.

The second question Deputy Halligan asked was whether no farmer would lose more than 28% of his payment. There is a voluntary measure that can be introduced in Ireland or anywhere else whereby a country can limit the losses to any one farmer of 30% of his direct payment. In my view, we should not use that in Ireland. The reason is that if a farmer is on €1,500 per hectare at the moment and we limited what he could lose to 30%, he would still be on €1,000 per hectare, which is indefensible. The result of having that limit would mean that people who are closer to the average payment would have to lose more to compensate. The 30% figure under the convergence model does not make much sense in terms of fairness.

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