Dr. Stan Lalor:

I am happy to speak to that. The knowledge transfer programme is in the process of being set up and will be operational in January. The advisers who are to engage on it were registered this summer and the applications, which set out the terms and conditions, for getting groups set up on the programme are just out.

Female participation is a matter that we have been active on over the past couple of years. There has been a great deal of policy movement regarding female participation across the sector and various schemes, for example, the targeted agriculture modernisation scheme, TAMS, have given specific support to females by providing preferential access to funding, incentives and so forth. Irrespective of the new knowledge transfer programme, we have been making ourselves available to establish female-only knowledge transfer groups. I do not have the exact figures, but the number is somewhere in the region of ten to 15.