One of the biggest feathers in the cap of europhiles when they tell me the wonderful benefits of being a member of the EU is that farmers in the country got much money through the Common Agricultural Policy but the average and ordinary citizen knows who got this, as it was the rancher rather than the ordinary farmer. Under the old Common Agricultural Policy, which is still in place, the top 2,000 farmers got over €150 million but the bottom 52,000 farmers got €125 million. This is socialism for the rich, as it cannot really be called anything else, but the Government is standing by it.

I understand the Government is moving in the right direction through an idea called "approximation", and there have been many reports in the press about how the small farmer is getting more money. Of course they are getting more money, as if they were to get a cent more, such a statement would be correct, and that is pretty much all they are getting. Under the new system, the top 2,000 farmers will get €135 million and the bottom 52,000 farmers will get in the region of €140 million. That is hardly a sea change. The EU agricultural Commissioner, Mr. Ciolo, has a proposal and under his "flattened" system, payments to farmers in Mayo, for example, would increase by €30 million. Under the system being backed by the Government, they will only increase by €4 million.

With regard to individual farmers, we have heard that small farmers will get more, but how much more will that be? A farmer on €36 per hectare will see a rise to €149 per hectare, and this is good news. The farmer on €643 per hectare will be reduced to €543. That does not change the position we have now, and which will exist in future, whereby a small farmer in Mayo will get €390 less per hectare than a rich farmer in Kilkenny. On top of that, we have the greening scandal, with a third of the payment going to environmental factors.

Perhaps the Deputy should run for Europe.

There will not be equal pay for equal work under this system. Why is the Taoiseach not supporting the small farmer in Mayo and why is the farmer in Kilkenny being subsidised. Why are the Larry Goodmans of the world being subsidised before the people of the Taoiseach's county?

What about the farmers in Kildare?

He must not want any votes in County Meath.

Settle down.

I saw the Deputy's poster at Malin Head so I know he is interested in the small farmers of the west.

That is in the north.

I thank the Deputy for referencing the small farmers of my native county. He forgets one factor in his analysis of the agricultural sector, which is productivity. The original intention from many of the former eastern bloc countries was to have a flat rate payment across the board.

Were that to happen productivity in this country would drop drastically. One cannot equate a 300 acre farm in west Waterford which has an intensive level of dairy production with 300 acres in many parts of my native county in terms of their capacity to produce. The Deputy seems to forget that. He also seems to forget that the negotiations, which opened under very difficult circumstances for Ireland’s EU Presidency last year, were not expected to be successful in the first instance, yet the conclusion was a €12.5 billion investment from 2014 to 2020, as a result of which the incomes of the more productive farmers at the higher level were reduced and that was given to the bottom 50,000 plus farmers to raise their incomes. A further €100 million was added specifically for the Border, midlands and western, BMW, region.

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Coveney, has also introduced a replacement for the environmental scheme, which is not as extensive or as flush as one might like it to be but which is a big help to the small farmers the Deputy mentioned. I do not accept his assertion that we should change the nature of the reform that has taken place. It is a question of giving an opportunity to the small farmers at the lower end of the scale to increase their incomes and to have an incentive to get into farming, which the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, has dealt with in the past two budgets through the tax regime. The Deputy needs to understand too that we cannot disincentivise productivity. He is aware that when EU quotas are abolished next year, this country will become the most productive agrisector country on the planet. Productivity is an essential and core ingredient of that development because the land will not produce itself unless it is worked and worked well and unless farming practices are of the highest standard, which I am happy to say applies almost universally now in Ireland.

The small farmers who are productive and who have to work twice as hard as the people on the big payments will be kind of insulted by what the Taoiseach just said. One can also be on a small payment and be productive. If one is getting €500,000 one does not have to try quite so hard to be productive.

Under the last round of Common Agricultural Policy payments, according to George Lee – the Taoiseach might remember him, he was the one with the brains in his party - €4.5 billion was spent off-farm. What will be done to prevent that happening again? The money was intended to support farmers but the rich farmer has bought himself an apartment in Croatia, or maybe in Bulgaria, or a second apartment in Dublin, and that money is not going into farming. My proposal would put money in the pockets of the small farmer and if the Government does this, it is to be hoped the next time I visit Castlebar town that I will not have to talk to one shopkeeper after another telling me they are on their knees and that it is not a question of if but when they close.

I suggest the Taoiseach gets out of his bubble, gets into reality, goes back to his town, where he was elected, and wakes up to the fact that he is crippling its people in many ways. This is one way because the small farmer spends every last cent locally. The man getting this payment is sitting beside Lake Garda sipping his cocktail. Who does the Taoiseach support? Him?

That man is sitting beside Deputy Flanagan. He should talk to Deputy Wallace about that. The vineyards get single farm payments.

Deputy Wallace is looking for a plane ticket to China.

I know it is Deputy Flanagan’s intention to be at Lake Garda himself. Good luck to him with the electorate. They may well decide to send him there for more reasons than one. The Deputy is perfectly entitled to raise his case. The environmental scheme I mentioned, introduced by the Minister, puts €1.45 billion into the pockets of small farmers mostly and smaller entities, because they have had difficulty measuring up here. There is also a special allocation for those small farmers from places the Deputy has forgotten about or maybe never visited, €1.37 million for the farmers on the islands off our coast, and a further €250 million for the rural development scheme under the Leader programme, which also goes mostly to rural areas. On top of that there is a €395 million capital investment for farm buildings under Food Harvest 2020.

The Deputy raises a valid point about main street development in every town in the country. People these days have a clear choice. The retail sector has been hit hard and it is important that not only do shops offer a range of goods, competitive prices and good service, which they do, but they must also move online to give people choice. The young generation may well visit premises and buy on their mobile phones or from the Internet in many ways. I do not accept the Deputy’s view that the Government has not been concerned about, or has not delivered for, the agrisector in general, big and small. During the process of the negotiations at the European Presidency meetings, we deliberately restructured the payments so that the small farmer at the lower end of the scale gets the benefit and that is taken off the big farmers at the top of the scale.

Deputy Flanagan does not want to recognise that producing a high quality product is essential for this economy and is responsible in the main for hundreds of thousands of jobs. That is why the Kerry Group is investing €100 million in Naas and Glanbia is investing very heavily on the Kilkenny-Carlow border. That is why there is movement in respect of land acquisition and retention, passing farms on to younger farmers, and why agricultural colleges are booked out by young farmers who want to get onto their courses. They see a very bright future in the agrisector, even if the Deputy does not.