§ The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Amos)My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Agriculture in Northern Ireland has made the following Statement:
The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development for Northern Ireland launched a major consultation exercise in September 2003 covering the choice of the main implementation options arising out of the CAP reform agreement reached in Luxembourg on 26 June 2003. The consultation ended on 16 January 2004 and after having considered stakeholder responses and the relative merits of the available choices, I have decided to deploy the following options in Northern Ireland.
Full decoupling of direct producer support will be implemented across the beef, sheep and arable sectors.
Full decoupling of direct producer support will be introduced in the diary sector from 2005.
The model of decoupling used will be a static vertical hybrid based partly on eligible land held in 2005 and partly on past patterns of individual producer subsidy claims.
National envelopes will not be deployed at this point.
Decisions on the use of the additional rural development regulation options are deferred and will be considered as part of a separate consultation exercise on future modulation policy scheduled to commence in March 2004.