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

It is a reasonable question. During the negotiations at European level I have been very strongly in support of positively discriminating in favour of young farmers because we need generational change in this industry. Fewer than 6% of farmers are under the age of 35 in Ireland and that is no basis for the kind of growth and expansion we want for this sector. Everybody agrees we need more young farmers. What we are trying to do in terms of the 25% top-up on single farm payments up to 50 hectares, which is about €16,000 for the highest earners in that category over five years, is to give people a good start in farming to allow them to invest in building up their herds, their yards and so on. If a person is 38 years of age and he or she has been farming since he or she was 25 years of age, is he or she in the same category as a person who is 38 years of age who has been farming only since 36 years of age? One is a new and young farmer and the other is a farmer who has been farming for quite some time. One could also make the case that a person who is 41 years of age who has been engaged in farming only for the past two or three years should benefit from this because he or she is a relatively young farmer as opposed to a person who is in his or her late thirties who has been farming for ten or 15 years. We have only so much money to spend here and we had to categorise the type of farmer who would get a conversation going in farm families between parents and sons and daughters to hand over those farms to those sons and daughters, to get generational change in agriculture which is what this money is targeted at achieving. The cut-off point is farmers who have come into farming in the past five years and farmers who were under the age of 40; they will get a payment for up to five years as long as they remain under the age of 40. I thought that was a reasonable compromise and balance. We fought hard for it. Many countries did not want this to be a mandatory measure but because of the stand taken by Ireland and a number of other countries, along with the Commissioner I might add, this is now a mandatory measure across the European Union for all countries, including Ireland.

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