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

It is important to point out that we are talking about the Commission's proposals. Commissioner Hansen put forward the Commission's position last year as to how he would like to see the next CAP going. He has a lot of recommendations in that. My job, as part of the Presidency, is to progress the Council's position on the AGRIFISH Council for next six months. The Council is the 27 ministers for agriculture and fisheries across the EU and we will progress what our agreed position is. Our goal is to get a partial general approach agreed - the bits that do not involve the budget. If we do not have the budget agreed globally, we cannot agree the budget elements in that. However, if we have a partial general approach, we have a fair set on what the Council of Ministers say their proposals should be.
We have had the discussion on pension proposals and generation renewal. That was looking to mandatorily take the single farm payment from farmers who receive the State pension. It is not an issue for France because France does not pay it to them already. It is a huge issue for us because we have many farmers who do not have an identified successor and we would be taking a single farm payment from them. That has been moved from being mandatory. Our position is that we are going to have that as a voluntary position to be offered but not mandatory.

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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