Ned O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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Question 294: To ask the Minister for Agriculture and Food her views on permitting a person (details supplied) in County Cork to retain their milk quota and continue to lease same. [7403/06]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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A person may lease his or her quota with the associated dairying lands to a close relative as defined in the milk quota regulations. A person may temporarily lease his or her entire milk quota without land only where they have applied for and received my approval to do so. Such approval is granted where the inability to make milk deliveries is due to force majeure, or in other duly justified cases, temporarily affecting the production capacity of that producer. No application for such approval was received in my Department from the named person for the 2005-06 quota year.

As both the application period for approvals has expired and the temporary leasing scheme for 2005-06 is now completed, the named person may not temporarily lease his quota for 2005-06. He may wish to consider applying for such approval when the temporary leasing scheme for the 2006-07 year is announced later in the spring and his case would be examined.

Where no deliveries have been recorded against a milk quota for two consecutive years, that quota may be added to the national reserve, although where the absence of deliveries is due to force majeure or in other duly justified cases the quota is not added to the reserve. When quota is added to the reserve, it is available for reallocation to the producer, or his or her successor, if he or she resumes deliveries within two years. Where a person sells his or her entire quota into a restructuring scheme, that person's successor has priority access to purchase an equivalent amount of quota from a subsequent scheme provided he or she takes over the holding and satisfies certain conditions.