Common Agricultural Policy
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
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Martin Heydon (FG), Kildare South

The overall level of funding will obviously be dictated by the negotiations on the MFF by the Heads of State and Government. The Departments of Finance and foreign affairs are the lead Departments in these negotiations, in consultation with the Department of the Taoiseach. Ireland's position is very clear. We cannot support a weakening of the CAP budget. Our priority in the negotiations is to secure an adequate overall budget and a CAP that is simpler, fairer and sufficiently flexible to respond to economic, social and environmental needs. I will continue to engage actively with the Commission, the European Parliament and other member states to ensure Ireland's interests are fully reflected as discussions progress.
On the Deputy's specific point about entitlements, these are key decisions that we will have to make but, right now, there is no provision for entitlements. This is not a major issue for most member states because most of them have fully flattened and converged payments, as discussed at Cabinet last week. We have to make decisions on what to fight for. If we did get entitlements back as part of our element of flexibility, it would probably be conditional on further movement on convergence. These are the types of negotiations and discussions we need to continue to have. We will be able to make decisions in some areas earlier but others will take a bit more time.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29