Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to discuss Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, reform, in particular eco-farm schemes alongside convergence. Ireland is an agricultural country with the best farm producers of quality food in the world. Farmers were encouraged over the years to invest in good faith, with the belief that they were being progressive and their hard work and the food they yielded was and still is recognised as the best in the world. They were assisted by Teagasc and other semi-State bodies to become gold standard producers. The CAP was initially introduced to drive the agricultural sector to provide safe food, which is what it did, all for the benefit of the consumer, while applying the greenest methods available for the times we are in.

Farming is the largest indigenous rural industry this country has. It is rural Ireland's biggest employer, and has proud progressive producers. The Government has pulled the rug out from underneath the sector. It agreed to disincentivise the productive farmer by introducing convergence to increase the payments of non-productive farmers who have nothing to do but sit and wait for it to happen. Why is the Government driving this policy? Does it not understand that some of those most affected will be tillage farmers? Does not realise that this is an anti-green policy?

All it will achieve is to make tillage farmers non-viable and they will exit the industry. It may be the case that this is not the intention of the Government, but that is what will happen. The sector that we have relied on for carbon sequestration has been given the biggest kick in the teeth imaginable and left wondering what it is all about. While we are past preventing convergence, the Government must understand the consequences of going beyond 75%.

It may believe in some misguided way that it will level the playing field to go further, and it will, but not in the way that the Government or the EU expects. It will level it in that the Government will make many farmers unviable because convergence, when combined with the proposal to pay eco-schemes on a flat rate per hectare, has a high risk of making more farmers unviable. Many farmers will see a reduction of 40% in their single farm payments combining both schemes. This cannot happen.

Convergence and the new proposed eco-schemes are an attack on progressive farming. What does the Government say to the next generation of progressive farmers taking over? They are all capable, willing and able to adopt to the greening of farming in Ireland. The Government is telling them to come on in, but do their worst and it will pay them more. It is telling people to come from the top to the bottom when everyone else in the world goes the other way. Can the Taoiseach commit that there will be no talk of anything above 75% on internal convergence and that eco-scheme payments will not be an addition to the basic farm payment and will not be based on costs incurred and income foregone, which will be just another form of convergence?

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