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

We have already taken steps to deal with that matter. To explain how things happened as they did, Ireland was one of the leading countries, if not the leading country, looking to insist that every country would be required to prioritise young farmers, and we got our way on that in the end. However, the Commission insisted, and agreed with us, that as part of that, if a country has a mandatory measure, then it has to define what a young farmer is in the regulation, which is what happened. Therefore, a young farmer was defined as a person under the age of 40 who has come into farming in the last five years, because the whole point of positively discriminating in favour of these people is to give them a bit of extra cash and financial support to get them started in agriculture as young farmers who have come into farming in recent times.

That was its purpose. This group of people is now getting priority treatment in Pillar 1. Their payments are being topped by the national reserve up to the national average, and then they are getting another top-up on top of that of 25%. They are also getting preferential treatment in Pillar 2. When we open the TAMS scheme in a few weeks time, they will have the option to get a 60% grant rather the 40% grant everyone else receives. That is a strong package for those farmers. There are some farmers who feel they have been locked out of that system because they missed out on installation aid or started farming six or seven years ago and, therefore, are not defined as young farmers in the regulation.

We went back to the Commission and advised it of the farmers who came into farming just after the installation aid scheme was closed by the previous Government and who cannot now qualify to be young farmers. We said we thought they were a disadvantaged group and wanted to help them. The Commission has accepted that and, as of today, such farmers can apply to the national reserve to get a top-up of their single farm payment up to the national average, which is a significant boost for that category of farmer.

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