Michael Comiskey (Fine Gael)

The Minister is very welcome to the House where we are delighted to see him. He has a very good brief on the entire subject.

We had a very good week last week when Commissioner Ciolas was in the House and we had the opportunity to put many questions to him. There is a great deal of sorting out to be done but we will all work to try to bring about the best deal possible for farmers in Ireland. I asked a question about young farmers and was particularly happy with the answer I got. I believe they will be very well looked after in the future regime. That is only right because in the past eight or ten years we have seen many young and not so young farmers working without any single farm payment. They continued trying to farm with no single farm payment. One such farmer was featured on the programme, "Ear to the Ground" , a week ago. It is difficult enough to farm with that payment. I can only imagine what it was like to do so, keeping up the interest, with no such payment.

We must consider some measure that will encourage older farmers to hand over their land at an earlier stage. There used to be a farm retirement package for farmers who could retire at the age of 55. There should be some little incentive for those aged 60 to 65 to hand over to younger farmers who are coming out of agri-colleges. These colleges are full of young farmers who will be looking for some place to go to. We should try to encourage the older farmers to hand over that little earlier.

I also welcome the movement towards a flat rate payment. It is very important that farmers in the more disadvantaged or hilly areas should get an increased payment. The average payment has been approximately €10,000 but in my part of the country many farmers would farm with a payment of less than €2,000. Some measure of flattening must be brought into the scenario.

I agree with Senator Ó Domhnaill that many farmers were de-stocked in the year 1997-98 and were not in a position to put stock back on the hills. I know the Minister will look favourably at that. Something will have to be done because it will take a number of years for those farmers to get back in. They will have to breed the stock on the hills and will not be able to buy them in because stock like that simply would not stay there. There were cases like that in Cooley after the foot and mouth disease outbreak. Farmers were not able to make the stock stay and so they must breed them naturally on the hills.