Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The existing CAP is going to roll over for a period of 12 months. I raised the necessary delegated acts to facilitate that with the Commission yesterday during a bilateral meeting. I hope that will happen quite shortly. We need to ensure that the systems within the Departments are prepared as quickly as possible in order that payments can continue to be made. The position of the Taoiseach and the Government on the funding of the EU is very clear. When the Taoiseach addressed the European Parliament, he made it very clear that we are willing to pay more to support projects that are really important to us, including CAP. We are making this commitment from our position as one of the highest per capitanet contributors in the entire EU. It is not simply a case of calling for more money. We put more into the EU than we get out of it. Much of what we get out of it comes through CAP. I agree strongly with the Deputy's point that farmers are being asked to do more and more. It appears that almost on a daily basis, nearly every one of this country's 5 million citizens tells farmers what they should do and how they should do it. Farmers seem to be admonished if they do not do things to the highest standard. It is the same right across Europe, where every day of the week 450 million citizens seem to tell farmers what to do. We need to be careful not to have a kickback against that. Farmers are operating to very high standards by international and global comparison. If we are asking them to do more, we need to given them the necessary resources to help them to do more.

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