Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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43. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his plans to seek a €200-per-head payment for suckler cows in the review of the Common Agricultural Policy. [12337/17]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Ireland has supported the greater market orientation of the CAP over recent reforms, including through the decoupling of payments from production. This has provided farmers a measure of income stability from the Basic Payments Scheme while allowing them to adjust production in response to market demand.

This approach to the reform of the CAP was one that was recognised as being the most suitable approach to take and my view remains that the best interests of farmers lie in retaining the flexibility to calibrate production to market demand without compromising income from the Basic Payment Scheme.

Future supports should in my opinion be targeted at improving the efficiency of existing suckler cows and I believe the existing BDGP is a good example of such a targeted support. This current model of funding provides support to enable suckler farmers to improve efficiency and profitability by improving the overall genetic merit of their beef herd. The BDGP builds on the substantial investment in data recording and genomics which has been made in recent years and will continue to drive further developments and improvements in this area.

Finding suitable means of supporting suckler cows in such a manner will of course provide its own challenges in the context of the review of the CAP but I am confident that it is a challenge that Ireland, through its team of dedicated and experienced negotiators, will be able to deal with in order to secure the optimum outcome for the Irish suckler herd when the time comes.

I do not believe that a mandatory coupled support is the most appropriate means of providing support to the suckler industry and I note that some Member States that retained coupled supports for their suckler cows have not been immune to the challenges faced by the beef sector across Europe in recent times.

The introduction of a €200 coupled suckler cow payment would involve a redistribution of funds allocated to farmers under Pillar I. This would necessitate a linear cut across payment to all BPS beneficiaries.

In relation to funding under Pillar II of the CAP, the Beef Data and Genomics Programme as already outlined is the current main support for the suckler sector and provides farmers with some €300 million of funding over the next six years. It is important that this programme is supported through the lifetime of the current RDP. This is of course in addition to the other supports for suckler farmers under the RDP notably GLAS, ANCs and Knowledge Transfer groups.

I am of course conscious of the challenges faced by suckler farmers currently and am aware of the importance of the sector to Ireland’s rural economy. It is a sector that I intend to ensure receives the support of my Department both at this time and also during the future review of the Common Agricultural Policy.