John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I find myself in the rare position of not only sharing time with Deputy Ó Cuív but also of agreeing with a few of his points. From first-hand experience, I am aware of what has happened to some of those involved in intensive farming, particularly farmers with dry stock, as a result of the fact that prices in the beef sector had been low until recently. Those in this group who were more involved in intensive farming tended to lose more money and were obliged to dip more into their single farm payment in order to keep the farms afloat. The Deputy also made a valid point about winners and losers that could emerge on the basis of what is being spoken about in this round of CAP discussions.

There is poor land and there are disadvantaged areas in every county, not least in my county. It strikes me that Kilkenny and Carlow, the counties I represent, and neighbouring Wexford are, as the proposals stand, the three counties that could end up losing most. The farmers who benefit most from the single farm payment and have the highest entitlement are dry-stock farmers. They are generally not dairy men and women.

Many family farm enterprises operate using finance they are able to secure on the basis of their single farm payment. I fully support the Minister on capping. I have always supported the notion that there should be an upper limit. However, I am talking about the difference between a small-scale beef producer being a viable farmer and able to live and rear a family on the farm and potentially not being able to do so if we go to the extreme and opt for 100% convergence. I admire that the Minister is sticking to his guns as regards the 75% proposal. Many people do not appreciate that 60% convergence operates under the current CAP system.

I remind Deputies that the origins of the CAP was to produce food. I was a Member of the Oireachtas in the early 2000s when the single farm payment reference years were introduced. I agree with previous speakers that the reference years now bear little resemblance to the practice on the ground for many farmers and new entrants, whom Deputy Ó Cuív mentioned. I remember speaking against the idea of the single farm payment at a number of meetings of farming organisation at that time. My argument was that the payment would be used to reduce payments once the coupling was broken between production and payment. I accept that we will never go back to a fully coupled payment but I regret that the leading farming organisation did not see fit recently to support at least a partial coupling.

As I said, most of the farmer producers in the south east are not industrial scale operators. The counties I represent and surrounding counties, not the counties in the west, have, on average, the lowest disposable household incomes nationally. The south-east region also has had the lowest third level attendance rates for a long time. Hopefully that will change with the establishment of a technological university in the region. Many people depend on agriculture and families are reared and children are educated using the income from the family farm. Every Member who has spoken has referred to the importance of supporting the family farm but there are different definitions of what would constitute a family farm.

I am a firm believer in the original purpose of CAP. It was never designed to be a welfare payment. It was designed to aid production and to ensure we have safe food on the shelves of our shops and supermarkets. I worry that, in the medium term, some sort of food supply issue will break out across the European Union and potentially across the world. As a country that can produce more food than we already produce, Ireland has a moral obligation to do that to the highest animal safety and food production standards. I fear that many farmers in the livestock sector, which is subject to the volatility of prices and is the very sector that most Members want to support most strongly, could be adversely affected if there is a significant drop in their single farm payment or if we were to go anywhere near 100% convergence.

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