The EU is losing 1,000 farms each and every day. That is the stark finding from a recent report from the European Court of Auditors. I want to raise it today because it brings some additional context to the challenges faced by rural Ireland apart from the farcical roll out of the national broadband plan. I believe we will never see the contract signed. The issue of generational renewal - getting young people to take up farming - has been described as the single greatest threat to agriculture and the fabric of rural Ireland as we have been privileged to know it.

According to the report from the European Court of Auditors, the first problem is the large reduction in the number of farms. In 2005, there were 14.7 million farms in the European Union. The latest available data put the number at approximately 10 million. Almost 5 million farms have disappeared in the intervening period. There is no indication that the speed of this trend is slowing down. This was recently confirmed by the Western Development Commission when it found the number of people working in agriculture in the west of Ireland has decreased by 41% in the past 20 years. We know that and the Government knows that. Its candidates are finding out on the doorsteps. What is equally disturbing is the finding that not only has there been a reduction in the number of young farmers, there is also a serious reduction in the amount of land held by them. The problem is that 80% of European farmers are over 45. One third of farmers are older than 65. The outcome of all this is that the threat to the family farm is growing at an alarming rate. We are now at a point where the largest farms, which make up just 20% of farms, received 80% of European subsidies for agriculture while the other 80% received only 20% of those subsidies. This is a disgraceful figure. According to the European Court of Auditors, this is the political choice we face in deciding the future CAP agreement.

Will the Tánaiste, therefore, accept that we are facing an unprecedented threat to the fabric of rural life in terms of the inability to make farming financially attractive to young people and young families? Small farms right across this State and indeed Europe are being gobbled up daily by large conglomerates. It is happening in my own county, in south Tipperary, with Coolmore's equine industry. Gobbled up and not in the interest of farming. There is no commitment to rural Ireland. They are only interested in bank balances and corporate affairs. They are corporate investments. There is no interest in our schools, our future or our clubs. This was made explicit by members of the European Court of Auditors when they appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. They accepted that there was a long discussion of a proposal of the European Commission to cut the payment for the big farms and to give more to the family farms. However, the proposal was not accepted because of the strength of the big industrial farming lobby. This is outrageous. Will the Tánaiste provide assurances as to the measures that we are adopting here to combat this trend of family farms vanishing from the face of the earth?

I know a bit about this issue because I was very much involved in the last discussion on the Common Agricultural Policy and how we would structure both Pillar 1 payments, which are direct payments, and Pillar 2 payments in terms of supporting more sustainable agricultural activity and maintaining and protecting the family farm structure, which is core to the make-up of rural Ireland. If we want to talk about investment in rural Ireland in terms of the volume of money, this round of the CAP will invest €12 billion in Ireland in the form of supports for food producers and farmers in many different ways. My view is that it represents good value for money for consumers because of the guarantees that it provides in terms of food safety and quality and environmental protections and it protects and sustains the fabric of rural Ireland, of which the Deputy is very much part and as I have been.

It is important that the Deputy does not misrepresent what we tried to do in the last round of the CAP and what I certainly will advocate for in this round as well. The idea that everybody who owns land in Ireland would get the same payment per hectare with no differentiation and taking no account of history or productivity in the past would be a fundamental mistake because one essentially would be paying people for land ownership and not farming. I suggest that the Deputy talks to the farmers in Tipperary, who lobbied incredibly heavily to ensure that I managed what was called the equalisation of funds in a way that was progressive but gradual and did not see dramatic changes in the income of full-time farmers, which is what would have happened if some people had their way, to ensure that we maintained farming as a productive sector, rather than some kind of social engineering project in rural Ireland. Farms and farmers can be and are profitable across the country if we can provide the marketplace that allows them to survive, grow and expand. The CAP needs to be a combination of things from protecting food quality and safety, animal welfare and a broader environment that we all have a responsibility to protect, to keeping productive farming intact and in parts of the country where it is not possible to make money in the marketplace through farming, keeping people on land as stewards of the countryside. It can do all of those things if we ensure that it is appropriately funded in the next round of CAP, for which this Government will fight.

I do not need a lecture about looking after farmers.

It seems the Deputy does.

We need the Government to pay attention to them. We need the Government to look at the likes of Coolmore Stud buying up 27,000 acres and driving all other family farms out. I thank the Tánaiste for the reply but, ultimately, the issue is the result of political choices on the part of the Tánaiste and his party but it was always the party of the landed gentry, not na daoine beaga or the small farmers. This was made clear by the members of the European Court of Auditors who appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Indeed it was well said that a core problem of European agriculture is that although we plan the CAP from a seven-year perspective, I believe it should be a 27-year period. Seven years is too short a timeframe. The Government needs to pay more than lip service. The Tánaiste talks about farmers being profitable. Tell me what sector is profitable at the moment? Dairy farmers are profitable by the skin of their teeth. All other sectors are slipping significantly. Things are very volatile with weather conditions and the onset of Brexit and the protracted negotiations, delays and uncertainty. What the Government needs to do is reassure farmers. We need to bring back something like a land commission to stop corporate conglomerates buying up land willy nilly.

They can do it because they can avail of tax incentives in the equine sector and everything else. What is required is a level playing field. We need support for the daoine beaga and the small farmer because without families living on farms and people living in villages, we can see what is happening in the case of our schools, GAA clubs and other sporting clubs with people fleeing the land. I gave the Tánaiste the figures. One thousand farmers a day across Europe are leaving the land. It is a perilous situation and we need to respond to that.

There are issues in what the Deputy has raised, which I do not want to dismiss. We need to be careful though not to interpret trends in Irish agriculture on the basis of what is happening broadly across the EU. The starting position of many of the newer member states when they joined the European Union was one of very small farmholdings, in many cases with dairy herd sizes of five or six milking cows, which is a totally different farming model from what we have here. What we need to focus on is Irish agriculture and its future, how we facilitate the sustainable growth story that currently is happening in the dairy sector and how we support the beef sector through what has been a very difficult two-year period, particularly linked to Brexit and the uncertainty surrounding it.

The cereal sector and everything else are being hit.

It is not a coincidence that my party and this Government advocated to get the agricultural commissionership for Ireland because we prioritise farming and agriculture as an essential part of rural Ireland-----

The big farmers.

-----and of the Irish economy and we will not be found wanting in terms of supporting agriculture, particularly the beef sector, through this difficult period also.