Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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29. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the single farm payment that will be payable to farmers in 2014 who received the following amounts of money in 2013: €4999, €5001, €10,000, €50,000 and €100,000; the percentage drop in payment for each category; the number of farmers who received a single farm payment of €5,000 or less in 2013; the number who received a payment of between €5001 and €10,000 in 2013; the number who received a payment of between €10,001 and €50,000 in 2013; the number who received a payment in excess of €50,000 in 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20338/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Up until the 2013 SPS scheme-year, Ireland’s SPS Gross National Ceiling was €1,340.9 million and the Net Ceiling was €1,255.5 million. In order that payments to farmers within each Member State respected the Net Ceiling, payment entitlements were subjected to a modulation deduction on 10% on all amounts in excess €5,000 and 14% on amount paid in excess of €300,000.

Following the agreement on the CAP Reform Package, Ireland’s new National Ceiling was fixed at €1,216.5 million A key issue was that the outcome of the CAP negotiations protected the overall Irish national ceiling, which was one of my key objectives during the negotiations, and preserved it at €1,200 million approx and avoided the type of major cut that would have affected farmers’ incomes. As the modulation deduction no longer applies under the 2014 Single Payment Scheme it was necessary to provide for a linear reduction to payment entitlements in order to ensure compliance with the new 2014 National Ceiling of €1,216.5 million. This was achieved under the provisions of EU Regulation 1310/2013. The Commission’s original proposal was a linear reduction should be applied to all entitlements irrespective of their value. I disagreed with these proposals and sought to retain the old modulation status quo whereby the linear reduction would simply apply to entitlements in excess of €5,000.

Despite our best efforts during the negotiations it was not possible to retain the existing mechanism. However, Ireland did manage to persuade the Commission to include a discretionary provision in the 2014 Regulation to enable Member States to exclude from the linear reduction the activated entitlements held by farmers, who claimed €5,000 or less under the 2013 Single Payment Scheme. I decided to implement this provision in order to protect smaller-scale producers in Ireland. For reasons of equity, I also decided that any farmer who claimed in excess of €5,000 would receive a minimum entitlement value of €5,000 and would not fall below that figure. For example, a farmer claiming €5,200 should receive €4,655 in 2014 if the linear reduction was applied in full but is now guaranteed a minimum payment of €5,000. This brought the proposed reduction (excluding financial discipline) to 10.39% but protected farmers at just over €5,000 entitlement value and below from the worst effects of the cut.

In effect, this means that a farmer who was paid €4,999 in 2013 will be paid €4,999 in 2014 and where paid €5,001 in 2013 will be paid €5,000 in 2014. Those paid €10,000, €50,000 and €100,000 were paid €9,500, €45,500 and €90,500 in 2013 and will be paid respectively €8,970 (a 5.3% reduction), €44,850 (a 1.3% reduction) and €89,700 (a 0.8% reduction) in 2014. The further data on farmer numbers sought by the Deputy is being extracted and will be supplied directly to the Deputy as soon as possible.