Professor Tommy Boland:

I thank the Senator for his positive comments. We have a passion for agriculture in the school of agriculture and food science in UCD. We have a passion for supporting that sector. I want to pick up on the Senator's point about the anxiety for farmers. One of my colleagues, Dr. Tomás Russell, conducted a wonderful, but very worrying, piece of research that showed the farming community has the highest rate of suicidal ideation among all cohorts of the economy. One of the big drivers of that was the negative perception of the public, the pressures around climate change and the blame being placed on farmers for climate change. Unfortunately, when we see agriculture in the media, quite often it is an instance of bad practice that is being used to reflect normal practice when that is not the case. International bad practice is sometimes used as a barometer for what happens in Ireland. I am glad that some of our research work was featured on RTÉ news this year. Perhaps it was a slow news day but we had a positive news story about multispecies sward on the "Six One News" and the "Nine O'Clock News". Like our colleagues in Teagasc, we are happy to welcome the opportunity to engage in those debates where the offer is made.