Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)
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Question 368: To ask the Minister for Agriculture and Food if she intends to raise the upper limit for leasing under the farm retirement scheme; the details of same; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7898/06]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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The objective of the European Council regulation which governs the early retirement scheme is structural reform, through the provision of a financial incentive to older farmers to retire early in order to facilitate their replacement by younger farmers who are considered more likely to improve the economic viability of the holding. The regulation sets down minimum requirements that must be met, but enables individual member states to set additional conditions considered necessary to meet the objectives of the scheme.

In designing the scheme, my Department considered that the focus should be on younger farmers and provided for a sliding upper age limit for prospective transferees starting at 45 years and reducing annually to 40 years for applications received in 2006. The representatives of young farmers continue to support this structure. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food, however, recommended, in its 2005 report on the operation of the scheme of early retirement, the restoration of the limit to 45 years and I am considering the matter.