Final CAP post-2027 submission · Part II

Reward the movement, not the birthday.

Part II of our CAP submission takes the retirement and land-transfer package from the beef plan and applies it across sheep, tillage and dairy — so land moves to the next generation in every sector, not only ours.

Submitted by Brendan Kennedy  ·  Working farmer, Co. Tipperary  ·  July 2026

⬇ Download Part II (Word)

Much of Ireland’s strongest entry support still depends on age, family connection or existing farm status.

The young farmer top-up and enhanced investment aid are age-linked. Major tax reliefs favour family transfer. The National Reserve can help young farmers and new farmers, but no mainstream farm-support payment is built directly around the moment a retiring farmer releases land and a genuine entrant takes responsibility for it.

Ireland has had no broad farm-retirement payment since the previous Early Retirement Scheme ended.

Public money should flow when land moves into active, long-term use — by sale, succession, partnership or a secure lease — whether the entrant is family or not.

The mechanism is the one set out in Part I. A retiring farmer, over a qualifying age, transfers the farm through sale, gift, succession, partnership or a lease of at least five years to a trained young farmer or genuine new entrant.

• The retiring farmer receives a fixed-term annual retirement payment, with a dignity clause allowing them to keep the house and a small paddock without affecting their pension.
• The entrant receives an establishment payment on the transferred land and access to the scheme history needed to build a viable business, paired with whatever post-2027 EU establishment support Ireland chooses to implement.

The proposed EU framework could allow substantial establishment packages for young farmers and new entrants. Ireland should use that flexibility to support real transfers, not merely reward eligibility on paper.

Here is how the principle would work across the main sectors.

Sheep — the flock passes on with the hill

The Sheep Improvement Scheme and the National Sheep Welfare Scheme already provide a structure through which support reaches active flocks. The Department has also shown that new entrants can be admitted to sheep schemes. That proves the entrant-side door can be opened.

The deeper problem is transfer. The sheep-farming population is ageing, particularly in hill areas. Commonage and marginal land can remain formally occupied while the active flock declines, because the margins are too weak to attract a successor and the scheme history does not move easily with the enterprise.

The result is not always a clean transfer. It is gradual withdrawal.

We propose:

• A flock-transfer top-up when a flock and its associated land move together to a qualifying entrant for at least five years.
• A fixed-term payment for both the retiring farmer and the entrant during the transfer period.
• A rule allowing the eligible flock reference and participation history to move with the flock, subject to verification.
• A specific provision for commonage shares, so the land, flock and grazing responsibility transfer as one package.
• Continued eligibility only where the land remains actively grazed and the flock is maintained to agreed welfare and breeding standards.

The purpose is not to preserve every flock forever. It is to stop viable hill and lowland sheep enterprises disappearing because the person leaving and the person entering cannot make the transfer work.

Tillage — turn conacre into continuity

Ireland already supports tillage through Protein Aid, straw-incorporation measures and sector-specific payments. Yet the area under tillage remains under pressure from weak margins, competing land uses, short-term letting and the high cost of entry.

For a new grower, the barrier is not simply access to land. It is access to land for long enough to justify machinery, crop rotation, soil improvement, storage and precision technology. An eleven-month conacre agreement may suit the owner, but it is a poor foundation for a new farming business.

We propose a Tillage Continuity Payment. It would reward a retiring grower or landowner who converts short-term letting into a secure lease of at least five years to a qualifying tillage entrant. The payment would be conditional on:

• The land remaining in tillage for the agreed term.
• A recognised rotation and soil-management plan.
• The entrant retaining operational control of the crop.
• The agreement being registered and independently verifiable.
• The land not being diverted immediately to grass, energy crops or another higher-bidding use.

The entrant should also receive access to a dedicated capital line for machinery-sharing, cooperative machinery use and precision-agriculture equipment. That should include GPS guidance, section control, variable-rate spreading and spraying, yield and soil mapping, satellite and drone imagery, and digital crop and nutrient records.

This should be designed as a new entrant investment measure, not treated as a general machinery grant. The aim is to ensure that a new entrant starts close to the technology frontier rather than spending the first decade trying to catch up.

Precision farming can reduce inputs, improve records, lower costs and strengthen compliance. A scheme that equips entrants properly would also create demand for rural agri-technology, contracting and advisory services.

Dairy — fund the structure, not the cow

Dairy does not need a coupled headage payment. Its challenge is different.

The sector’s profitability, land demand, infrastructure costs and regulatory exposure create a high barrier to entry. A new dairy farmer needs secure land, significant capital and a route into the herd and business. That makes phased transfer more important than a once-off handover.

We propose:

Registered share-farming and phased succession. The retiring farmer should be able to taper out over five to seven years while the entrant gradually builds equity in the herd, machinery and business. The retirement payment would support the outgoing farmer during that taper, provided operational control is genuinely moving to the entrant. The arrangement should be registered, independently reviewed and tied to a fixed transfer timetable.

Equal treatment for non-family successors. The Succession Farm Partnership tax credit should be redesigned so a trained non-family entrant can qualify on the same basis as a family successor. The existing credit can be worth up to €25,000 over five years. The issue is not only the amount — it is whether the scheme is built around a genuine transfer or assumes that succession must happen inside the family. Where no son or daughter wants the farm, a qualified outsider should not be treated as a second-class successor.

Help entrants comply with nitrates rules. New entrants should not be exempted from environmental standards. They should receive priority access to the advice, capital support and land-structure measures needed to operate within them. That includes slurry-storage investment, low-emission spreading equipment, nutrient-management planning, secure access to additional land, registered export and import arrangements, digital fertiliser and slurry records, and independent compliance support during the establishment period.

A new entrant should face the same water-quality obligations as everyone else, but should not be locked out because the structure and investment needed to comply are beyond reach on day one.

Use verified digital records. Verified digital nutrient and field records should be accepted for compliance and inspection where they provide evidence equal to or better than paper records — GPS fertiliser applications, slurry-spreading records, variable-rate maps, soil-test histories, and stocking and grazing records. The purpose is not to weaken regulation. It is to make compliance more accurate, transparent and workable.

The same principle in every sector

The details differ, but the underlying problem is the same. A sheep farmer may have a flock and commonage but no successor. A tillage farmer may let land annually because a long-term handover is too risky. A dairy farmer may have a valuable business but no family member willing to take it on.

The current system often waits until the transfer is complete and then supports the entrant. That is too late.

The difficult period is the handover itself — when one farmer must step back, another must take control, and both need enough certainty to commit. A retirement and establishment package should bridge that period.

Land mobility needs price transparency too

A retiring farmer and a new entrant can negotiate a lease, flock, herd or machinery transfer without any reliable public reference for what the arrangement should be worth.

That is the same information gap cattle farmers face at the factory gate. One side often has more market knowledge than the other, and neither has a dependable public benchmark.

Every approved transfer scheme should therefore publish anonymised reference information on lease duration and value, land type, enterprise type, stock transferred, machinery included, regional differences, payment structures, and partnership and share-farming terms.

The figures should not dictate the private agreement. They should ensure that neither side negotiates completely in the dark.

The test for public money

The test should not be whether the entrant is under a certain age. It should not be whether the retiring farmer has a son or daughter interested in farming. It should not be whether a legal transfer took place on paper while control stayed exactly where it was.

Did land, stock and operational responsibility move into the hands of someone who will actively farm them for the long term?

Where the answer is yes, the public interest is clear. The retiring farmer gains dignity and certainty. The entrant gains a viable starting point. The land remains actively farmed. The rural economy retains a working business. And the State supports an actual structural change rather than another qualifying category.

Know what the transfer is worth

Land mobility will not be solved by grants alone. It also needs transparent values, secure agreements and a system in which both sides understand the deal they are making.

That is the same principle this site was built on at the factory gate. Publish the information. Reduce the imbalance. Let the person doing the work see the whole board.