Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is interesting, but not surprising, that the lowest is in the west and the highest is in the south east. I wonder if that is a general trend. I appreciate that the Minister does not have the figures and as I said at the outset, I did not expect him to have them all. Is that a general trend? It is interesting that the greening is a percentage of the entitlement. While agriculture per acre might be more productive in certain parts of the country than in others purely because they are gifted with better land and there is very little that can be done about that, there may be more environmental benefits to the type of farming in other parts of the country but that benefit is not being seen by those farmers. I ask this in the context of the debate on convergence and what we plan to do about greening measures. The information that we have to hand needs to feed into policy.

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