Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

114. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the extent to which he remains satisfied that the benefits of Common Agricultural Policy reform are distributed evenly throughout the agri-food sector; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19139/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

One of the main policy changes agreed in the 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy was to give Member States the flexibility to redistribute EU direct payments between farmers with a view to ensuring a fairer and more equitable distribution of these payments. This flexibility allowed Member States to even out anomalies in payment levels while ensuring that the level of redistribution was not of a scale that could have a detrimental effect on the production capacity of their farmers. In Ireland’s case, we used this flexibility to converge the extremely high and extremely low payment levels to a degree that would not jeopardise the achievement of the Food Harvest 2020 objectives.

The reform also made special provision for generation renewal in the farming sector by providing additional supports for young farmers.

I am satisfied that both of these initiatives have served to make the reformed CAP fairer and more equitable, and to ensure that the benefits of the reform are evenly spread throughout the sector.