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

We are in a process and, before the end of the year, as I have said repeatedly, we will provide full clarity concerning the pillar 1 and pillar 2 payments. Pillar 1 is more straightforward and I have outlined my views on it many times. Some issues need to be decided upon, including whether we introduce a level of coupling, whether to transfer money between pillars, and the levels of support for young farmers.

The Deputy is right to say pillar 2 is more complex. That is because I know how much money I have to spend on pillar 1 and it is just a matter of deciding how to distribute that between farmers. On pillar 2, however, I do not yet know how much money I will have to spend. Some €313 million comes from the EU each year, but I do not know what level of co-funding we will add to that to make up the full rural development fund. I will have to get a Government decision on that but it has not yet been taken.

This assumption that it is the norm to have 50:50 co-funding for rural development is not true. Even in Deputy Ó Cuív's time in government when we had loads of money to spend, we did not provide 50:50 co-funding. Let us be realistic therefore. Even in the good times in Ireland we were not providing 50:50 co-funding for rural development in terms of the average spend on such development over the past seven years.

I am trying to maximise the funding for rural development programmes and the rural economy generally. I will do that as effectively and proactively as I can. I will be talking to my Government colleagues to try to secure the maximum level of funding, but we need to design a rural development programme that reflects the ambitions and challenges of Irish agriculture for the next seven years. I assure the Deputy that I will not be designing a rural development programme which is simply to draw down all the EU money and minimise the Exchequer contribution. I will try to maximise the financial contribution and the effect of the programme that it will fund over the next seven years. The Deputy will see the actual numbers before the end of the year.

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