Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his view on the effect that the decoupling process within common agricultural policy reform has had upon the scale and intensity of Irish farms and farming; if the trends towards larger, more intensive farming practice partially brought about as a result of the decoupling process has had an effect upon the State's overall ability to tackle the emission of climate-forcing agents from intensive farming as part of a wider programme of emissions reduction; the impact into the future that the full decoupling process is expected to have; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6912/13]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Ireland moved to fully decoupled payments in 2005. In the period since then, there have been no radical changes to the structure, scale and intensity of Irish farming enterprises. According to the 2010 CSO Census in Agriculture, the number of farm holdings has decreased by 2,000 from 141,527 in 2000 to 139,860 in 2010 and average farm size has been relatively stable with a slight increase from 31.4 ha to 32.7 ha over the same period. In addition there has been a decline in cattle and sheep numbers over the period.

On the emissions side, there is evidence to show that emissions from agriculture have been in steady decline since 1998 with total sectoral emissions in 2010 some 8.3% lower than 1990 reference levels. In terms of future emissions, a recent Teagasc study on the Marginal Abatement Cost Curve for Irish Agriculture finds that, under Food Harvest 2020, and with the adoption of the cost beneficial measures alone, there would be virtually no change in emissions from the 2010 level, (4.5% below 2005 - EU Effort Sharing reference year).