The Single Farm Payment, introduced by the EU to compensate for past price reductions, will have little legitimacy in the future, the National Forum on Europe was told yesterday.
Alan Matthews, professor of European agricultural policy at Trinity College Dublin, made the assertion during a debate headlined The Future of the European Model of Agriculture and attended by representatives of the farming sector.
"Even in Ireland, we opted to maintain the historic basis for the Single Farm Payment which maintained the traditional disparity in payments between farmers in the south and east of the country, on the one hand, and in the BMW [Border, midland and western] region on the other," he said.
Prof Matthews called for the greater part of the payment to be moved into Pillar Two of the Common Agricultural Policy (Cap), addressing rural development and the agri-environment.
"Pillar Two itself should be reviewed, given its mainly agricultural focus at the present, to emphasise more its contribution to rural development", he added, recommending there should be a greater linkage with cohesion and structural funds in the future.
The forum was also addressed by Fine Gael MEP Maireád McGuinness, who sits on the European Parliament's agriculture and rural development committee, and Fianna Fáil TD Dr Martin Mansergh.
Both speakers discussed the future of EU agricultural policy and the implications of the Doha development round of world trade talks, the Cap "health check" due later this year, as well as the EU budget review process.
Dr Mansergh said European governments would be "quite literally mad to abandon the security of [ food] supply created in Europe since the second World War, and that means in all probability that the Cap and a measure of public subsidy must continue."