Let me say at the outset that politically I hold nothing in common with Clare Daly or Richard Boyd Barrett or any left-of-centre politician or political party.

Fianna Fáil has even shifted too far left for me with its populist anti-water charges agenda.

Politically, I’m further to the right. I believe in private enterprise and that it should be rewarded and I expect little in the form of handouts from the State. If I become thirsty or tired or sick, I won’t look to the State for help.

I expect you may have suspected this already but I feel the need to stress it now as I am about to make a statement, which you would expect to come from Ms Daly or Mr Boyd Barrett.

The Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) should be capped. There is no good reason why any individual farmer or farming business should receive in excess of €200,000.

I expect that most of you would probably agree unless, of course, you are Larry Goodman or one of the dozen or so who are in this league. But I have to be braver than that and lower the bar considerably.

Let’s look at this from the other side. The BPS is a very necessary tool for maintaining farm profitability. Without it, most of us would be losing money year-on-year.

Generally, commodity prices are too low and costs are too high to make farming viable without the BPS. However, as an aside, if you’re still losing money even with the BPS, it’s time to chuck it in.

If you are not a farmer, you may suggest that if farming cannot stand financially on its own feet then you shouldn’t be at it. After all, if I’m a (unsubsidised) trailer manufacturer in Carlow or assembling computers in Leixlip and it doesn’t pay, then I get out or go under. Non-profitable businesses die and rightly so.

But farming is different.

Firstly, there’s the whole issue of food security and safety. Without subsidies, Europe would be beholden to the rest of the world for its food supplies which may not be of a standard required by the EU. Secondly, rightly or wrongly, farming in Europe is not all about producing food. Europe’s over-regulated farmers have to increasingly manage their environment in terms of water, soil and air quality and biodiversity.

We effectively manage the countryside for all the people and for all of this we need financial help and hence we have the very welcome BPS. The BPS keeps European farmers producing food to the highest quality and maintenance of the countryside to the highest standard. If as a farmer you don’t like that, then try New Zealand – I’m too old.

BPS

Now, back to my leftish views on capping the BPS. Generally speaking, the more active you were as a farmer in the 1990s/early 2000s, ideally with lots of conacre or sugar beet or bullocks (not heifers or sheep), the higher your BPS is now.

This has become a very flawed historical basis for claiming a big BPS today.

Bigger farmers shouldn’t necessarily get the biggest payments. Where’s all this so-called economy of scale that I’m sick hearing about? Big BPS payments only fuel an already overheated conacre market. The real beneficiary is the landowner with his feet up.

The average BPS in Ireland is just €18,000. My thinking is that it should be capped at around €75,000 which, yes, will hurt me too. I’d be much more comfortable with a €100,000 cap but I’d be open to the accusation of taking a partisan view. But, still, I bet you can’t trump that for radical thinking – or maybe, with all the sunshine, I’ve lost the plot.