Irish farmers will receive £10 billion in direct payments over the next six years, the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh said yesterday. He was speaking at a briefing on the Action Plan for Agriculture and Rural Development, which was presented in Dublin yesterday.

The 200-point action plan was drawn up as a response to the Agri-Food 2010 Committee Report, published last March which predicted that there would only be 20,000 full-time farmers by the end of the decade.

However, the Minister said that he did agree with that prediction which he said was based on "tentative and conditional estimates made by the Committee and not targets to be aimed at".

Mr Walsh said there would be many more part-time farmers in the future as more opportunities would be created in the new National Development Plan to supplement their income.

The Agri-Food 2010 Committee report had estimated that the number of farmers would drop from 146,000 in the last decade of the Millennium to a situation where there would be 20,000 full-time farmers, 20,000 "in transition", i.e. working their way to full-time status and 60,000 part-timers, an overall loss of 40,000 farmers in the decade. "As set out in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, the Government is fully committed to the development of a core of full-time farms which deliver a viable return to both capital and labour," he said.

"At the same time, our growing economy offers attractive off-farm job opportunities and this provides an additional route to household viability for many families on smaller farms," he said.

"The overall objective of the Government is to ensure that the highest possible number of full-time farms are retained and this will be facilitated by the range of supports received by these farms, the benefits of Agenda 200 and the measures in this plan," he said.

Mr Walsh said that one of the most important actions to be taken in the Government's plan was to ensure that full and part-time farmers in the future would be treated equally. "For example, on and off-farm income will be assessed equally in the new farm schemes where there are income thresholds," he said. This would mean that part-time farmers could avail of schemes from which they were currently debarred.

"The consequential number of such farms in the future will be dependent on the decisions made by the farm families themselves and this will ultimately rest with the young people," he said.

"We will be encouraging a situation where a young person taking over a farm will face a number of attractive options from which he or she can choose, but all of which involve earning a living in rural Ireland," he said.

Mr Walsh said that no one should begrudge them those options or deny their right to make the decisions that were best for themselves and for that reason future policy must focus on treating both full and part-time farmers equitably.

Mr Walsh said that he did not agree with the predictions made by the committee because they failed to take into account the opportunities which would be available both on farms and in the wider economy.

"There is no doubt there will be some pain which will flow from the serious challenges we face from the review of the CAP in 2002-2003, enlargement of the Union and in the World Trade negotiations," he said.

"I asked for the bottom line from the committee and they gave it to me and this action plan is in place so we can face those challenges before it is too late," he said. Mr Walsh said there was a growing confidence in agriculture this harvest because of good weather and an upturn in prices. Some economists had predicted that farm incomes would increase by 15-16 per cent this year and no one should begrudge such an increase because the previous two years had been difficult.

Other points covered in the plan included grant assistance measures under the National Development Plan to encourage the rationalisation of primary processing and to ensure that Ireland has the range, quality and profile of food products to meet the demands of modern consumers.

The plan also provides for a comprehensive study of the dairy industry to maintain its strong momentum and to meet future challenges, which will be carried out by an outside body.

It also outlined a major effort to develop the organic sector where significant opportunities were emerging.

The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) said the plan would do nothing to maintain the number of full-time farm units. Fine Gael's agriculture and rural development spokesman, Mr Alan Dukes, dismissed the report as vague, misleading and late. He added that it was long on intentions, but "lamentably short on action".