The European Commissioner for Agriculture Christophe Hansen has addressed the thorny issue of non-farmers purchasing agricultural land in a questions and answers session during his first official visit to Ireland.

The commissioner gave an address to the 70th Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) AGM and took questions from the farmer representatives in attendance.

Vice-chair of the IFA Environmental Committee Mark Connors said that "only half the recipients of the single farm payment consider themselves farmers" and emphasised that "we have got to direct the payment towards farmers".

Responding to the comment from Connors, Commissioner Hansen said: "I think it is very clear that we need to better target direct support where it really belongs."

The commissioner said that direct support should be targeted towards "young farmers but as well active farmers and I see a lot of differences in how the member states are defining who is an active farmer".

He commented on his own EU member state, Luxembourg, and said: "I see people that have not much to do with farming but they have the means to pay better prices for land than the farmers do."

His comment received a round of applause from the IFA national council.

Commenting on these cases, the commissioner said: "They buy up land so the real farmers don't get the land any more and they put some extensive Highlanders [cattle] or something like that on it."

The commissioner noted that these non-farmers buying land "are quite inventive" in how they "get the public support for that".

He noted that in these cases, the people getting the support are "not an active farmer, not a productive farmer" and said: "I think we have to look at that."

"Generally, the money has to get to somebody producing. There are different means, but there will always be people to find their way around [the regulations] and I think that is something we have to address," Commissioner Hansen said.