asked the Minister for Agriculture if he intends to pay an increase in sheep headage payments to coincide with the increase in cattle headage payments.

On a livestock unit basis payment rates under the disadvantaged areas schemes are already much higher for sheep (£63) than for cattle other than beef cows even after allowing for the recent increase to £50 in the rates for those cattle. The sheep rate does not include the EC ewe premium which for 1986 is likely to be over £130 per livestock unit equivalent to about £20 per ewe.

Would the Minister consider increasing the amount, because this involves one of our most valuable export markets? We should encourage people through subsidies to rear more sheep. Farmers are entitled to an increase in view of the past two bad years of losses in regard to mountain sheep.

I want to put on the record of the House that, as far as the subsidies to sheep farmers are concerned, they were never higher than at present. I do not want to trot out all the figures here but I might say that each breeding ewe will qualify for £20 in the current year. In addition, in the headage areas, the top rate is £9.50 per ewe. When one considers that, by way of our method of calculation there are allowed six ewes per acre, then one realises that one is talking about an awful lot of money, just over £63 per livestock unit. When one equally understands that there is no upper ceiling on the ewe premium, then one realises that one is talking about an awful lot of money in the sheep industry. It must be a terribly important area to be able to capture that sort of financial aid. That is one of the reasons, along with others, that we have been experiencing a 10 per cent increase in our ewe numbers each year, which speaks for itself.