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

I know a bit about this issue because I was very much involved in the last discussion on the Common Agricultural Policy and how we would structure both Pillar 1 payments, which are direct payments, and Pillar 2 payments in terms of supporting more sustainable agricultural activity and maintaining and protecting the family farm structure, which is core to the make-up of rural Ireland. If we want to talk about investment in rural Ireland in terms of the volume of money, this round of the CAP will invest €12 billion in Ireland in the form of supports for food producers and farmers in many different ways. My view is that it represents good value for money for consumers because of the guarantees that it provides in terms of food safety and quality and environmental protections and it protects and sustains the fabric of rural Ireland, of which the Deputy is very much part and as I have been.

It is important that the Deputy does not misrepresent what we tried to do in the last round of the CAP and what I certainly will advocate for in this round as well. The idea that everybody who owns land in Ireland would get the same payment per hectare with no differentiation and taking no account of history or productivity in the past would be a fundamental mistake because one essentially would be paying people for land ownership and not farming. I suggest that the Deputy talks to the farmers in Tipperary, who lobbied incredibly heavily to ensure that I managed what was called the equalisation of funds in a way that was progressive but gradual and did not see dramatic changes in the income of full-time farmers, which is what would have happened if some people had their way, to ensure that we maintained farming as a productive sector, rather than some kind of social engineering project in rural Ireland. Farms and farmers can be and are profitable across the country if we can provide the marketplace that allows them to survive, grow and expand. The CAP needs to be a combination of things from protecting food quality and safety, animal welfare and a broader environment that we all have a responsibility to protect, to keeping productive farming intact and in parts of the country where it is not possible to make money in the marketplace through farming, keeping people on land as stewards of the countryside. It can do all of those things if we ensure that it is appropriately funded in the next round of CAP, for which this Government will fight.

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