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

First, this has nothing to do with an election. That might be Deputy Ó Cuív's mindset but it is not mine. This is about putting in place a new CAP process around a redistribution of single farm payment and incorporating a sheep grassland scheme in the same way as when we decoupled headage payments for beef that became part of a farmer's single farm payment. Farmers got the benefit from that. We are now looking at a redistribution post-decoupling and so it makes sense to apply the same rationale to the sheep sector as we applied to the beef sector in the past, and to maximise the amount of money available to decouple for sheep farmers before we do that, which is what we have done.

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