Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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1701.To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to estimate the full-year cost of paying small farmers with an annual farm income of €20,000 or less a basic income payment of €10,000. [32955/24]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Census of Agriculture 2020 (CSO) indicated there were 135,037 farms in Ireland, with an average farm size of 33.4 hectares. This comprises a mix of full and part time farmers.

Teagasc carries out an annual National Farm Survey (NFS) of larger farms and latest figures show an average direct payment (i.e. payments from my Department) of €19,628 to those farms.

The data from the 2022 NFS indicates 57% (49,095) of farms earned a “Family Farm Income” of less than €20,000. In addition there are smaller farms that are not covered by the NFS as they have an output of less than €8,000 per annum. There are surveyed periodically and according to the Teagasc Small Farms Report 2022, there are 48,356 such family farms.

This totals 97,451 farms with family farm income of less than €20,000. Paying a basic income payment of €10,000 to each totals approximately €975 million (with the caveat that this is based on survey data from different surveys in different years and assumptions).

It is important to note that Family Farm Income is not equivalent to household income. In 2022, 83% of small farm households had an off-farm income source, either through off-farm employment or a pension, while the equivalent figure among larger NFS farm households was 81%.

In 2022, Irish farmers received approximately €2.02 billion in payments. Ireland’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan is worth approximately €9.8 billion over the five years 2023-27 inclusive. This includes the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) and the Complementary Redistributive Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS), which is designed to redistribute CAP funds from larger farms to medium and smaller sized farms.