Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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202. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if a person who was renting their land to another person and has not been actively farming for the last 10 to 12 years and who will not be submitting a single farm payment application until 2014, will be entitled to any single farm payment entitlements under the new common agricultural policy; if alternatively they may apply to the National Reserve for entitlements; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34014/13]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The agreement reached on 26 June between the three European institutions on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy will come into force in the 2015 scheme year. All existing payment entitlements will expire on 31 December 2014. Eligibility for the allocation of new entitlements is clearly defined, the first criteria being that the person must have received a direct payment under the 2013 scheme year.

Priority for the allocation of entitlements under the National Reserve is given to ‘young farmers’ and to farmers ‘who commence their agricultural activity’. A ‘young farmer’ is defined as a person who is no more than 40 years of age in the first year of submission of his/her BPS application, is setting up an agricultural holding for the first time or has set up such a holding during the five years preceding the first submission of the BPS application. A farmer ‘who commences his agricultural activity’ is defined as a person ‘that did not have any agricultural activity in his own name and at his own risk in the five years preceding the start of the agricultural activity’. In both cases however the Member State may add other qualifying criteria such as educational qualifications.