Common Agricultural Policy
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Martin Heydon (FG), Kildare South

What is fairly clear from all utterances in the 17-odd months I have been in this job is my strong desire to protect the CAP budget, building alliances with member state colleagues in the AGRIFISH Council but also here in government and at Cabinet, articulating exactly why the CAP is so important to us. Ireland is a net contributor to the EU; we pay in more than we get back. That is something we should be proud of as a nation. We took the structural funds in the early years of being members of the EEC and we built an economy, a country and a society here that can be prosperous enough for us to be a net contributor. It is something we should be proud of. Those in certain other member states tell me they strive for that and look forward to the day their economies have such success that that is where they are at. We obviously want to maximise our return from being members of the European Union. There are huge benefits from being a member of that Common Market with over 450 million people.
On the financial return, 75% of our receipts come back through the CAP. This is not just a matter for us here discussing agriculture and for people in rural areas. This matters to the whole economy because if we see a reduction in CAP, it will reduce the amount of money available to come back to the economy from Europe.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09