Mr. Seán Coughlan:

I thank the Chairman and the committee for the invitation. I welcome the opportunity to provide some information to the committee on the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, ICBF, and its role in the agriculture industry. I shall briefly provide information on the functions of ICBF and how technology is used by the organisation.

ICBF was established in 1998 as a non-profit industry good and non-State body. It followed many years of discussion around how the Irish cattle breeding industry might be better organised to remove duplication and increase the rate of genetic gain in our cattle. It is a unique organisation, with its shareholders combining the farm organisations of the IFA and ICMSA, milk recording organisations and artificial insemination organisations - many of which originated from the traditional dairy co-operative structure - along with the dairy and beef breed associations. Thus it is owned, one way or another, by farmers. It provides services, directly and indirectly to all farmers in Ireland. It is a genuine example of the potential of a co-operative type infrastructure when operated to its full capability.

ICBF created a database to provide the information needed for effective cattle breeding decisions at all levels in the industry. The most difficult aspect of any database is establishing a timely flow of clean, accurate and comprehensive data. One of the key features of the ICBF database infrastructure is the removal of duplication in data collection. For example, in 1998, a dairy farmer involved in milk recording and herd-book registrations would have to communicate on five occasions about a single calving event. By 2002, with the introduction of ICBF animal events, only one notification of that event was required to satisfy all cattle breeding requirements. The measure has saved costs, increased data accuracy, increased farmer participation and made cattle breeding information more relevant and valuable to all Irish farmers.

ICBF has an annual budget in the region of €5 million. In broad terms, our income comes in the form of a tag contribution from farmers, which accounts for 20%, a Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine operating grant, which accounts for 20% and which covers the cost of activities the ICBF took over from the Department, service income, which is about 40%, and the national development plan capital grant, which accounts for the remaining 20%. ICBF provides employment to 35 people and is based in rural west Cork. It also provides a contract for a further 35 people in the provision of weight recording and linear scoring services throughout rural Ireland.

I shall outline the functions of ICBF. First, it generates genetic evaluations or breeding values for animals based on the ancestry and performance data available nationally and internationally. It is licensed by the Department to generate national genetic evaluations. Genetic evaluations can identify breeding lines that give more output for meat, as an example, and for the same level of inputs such as feed. The outcome of the process is a breeding index for an animal expressed in euro which farmers can use to make breeding decisions. All 80,000 breeding herds nationally benefit from these evaluations.

Second, to facilitate the generation of genetic evaluations, ICBF collects animal performance data from a wide variety of sources, including calf registration and animal movement data in conjunction with the Department's systems, artificial insemination data, milk recording data, slaughter data, mart data, DNA or genomic data, health data in the form of laboratory results and on-farm data, and on-farm performance data, which will become increasingly important as the focus switches to cost of production profit traits.

Third, ICBF plays a central role in beef and dairy breeding schemes. These schemes identify the sires that will deliver a maximum genetic gain to the commercial herds. It will ensure the next generation of livestock are more profitable than the previous generation.

Fourth, the ICBF engages with cattle breeders across the country, directly and indirectly, delivering breeding information so that farmers can make profitable breeding decisions at the farm level. This happens in the following number of ways. Bull proofs are made available to the breeding organisations, such as artificial insemination companies, through a publicly available bull search which has more than one million searches per year; HerdPlus, ICBF's breeding information service, provides farmers with a mixture of paper based and web based tools for making informed breeding decisions; and the ICBF engages with stakeholders to increase awareness of the value of using breeding information to increase profitability at farm level.

The ICBF is not in the software business. It generates and distributes breeding information that farmers can use to make profitable breeding decisions. It communicates that information using a variety of technologies, but the bulk of engagement with farmers is still via paper. The need to communicate using the Internet is also critical, and in this day and age it is a basic requirement for any organisation. One of the key challenges for the ICBF is to get the wider farming population to engage with the breeding information and realise it has a key role to play in securing the long-term sustainability of farming.

The ICBF's ability to operate efficiently and effectively depends on its ability to utilise technology to its maximum in the capture of data, the calculation of breeding values through genetic evaluations, and the dissemination of the resultant information to commercial farmers for use in their day-to-day breeding decisions. The ICBF has always worked constructively with the farm management software providers. The backbone of their business was traditionally made up of three elements: electronic calf registration, the electronic herd register, and electronic premium-subsidy management. The ICBF is not involved in any of these areas.

The ICBF provides a start-up file that makes it easier for the software providers to get clients on board. We also provide an ongoing integrated transfer mechanism that allows data from the on-farm software systems to interact with data from a wide variety of sources captured through the national ICBF database. Thus, ICBF has in fact helped the farm management software providers to grow their business over the years. It continues to implement a policy of data sharing and integration.

Many countries are envious of the national resource which is the ICBF infrastructure. This was made clear at the 2012 International Committee for Animal Recording, ICAR, conference in Cork, which attracted in excess of 500 delegates from more than 50 countries. Other countries are grappling with the inefficiencies associated with not having a national industry-owned cattle breeding database operated on a not-for-profit basis. For example, in New Zealand there is significant turmoil and an inability to generate official national genomic evaluations due to the main database not being industry-owned and operated. In the US, various organisations are working together to get a collaboration agreement in place to allow the consolidation of data for genetic evaluation purposes. Ireland has a system in place. In the UK there is no level of integration at a national level in terms of cattle breeding data despite repeated attempts to establish such a structure.

The ICBF is an organisation that caters for the needs of all breeders in Ireland, small and large. It is at the core of the suckler cow welfare scheme which has played a key role over the past five years in sustaining the smaller, less profitable beef farms in the north and west. All those farms would have received technical reports from the ICBF, helping to identify areas which can be focused on to improve profitability. The ICBF plays a role in ensuring the traditional family farm can remain sustainable in the future.

The ICBF database is facilitating a significant amount of all-island research on the breeding end and in our work with Animal Health Ireland, AHI. The AHI uses the ICBF database as the backbone for the roll-out of its programmes. The ICBF has played a key role in the bovine disease eradication scheme which will be rolled out to all 80,000 breeding herds in 2013. This maximises the return on investment the State has made through various governments since 1998.

The ICBF has worked closely with Teagasc since its inception and collaboration continues to provide a huge benefit to the agri-industry in Ireland. It ensures a maximum synergy of resources. Advisers are in a position to give better quality advice in a more efficient and effective manner than would be possible without the link-up. This is especially so in the area of discussion groups that provide a forum for farms of all sizes to participate in a learning environment with peers to help sustain their businesses. Likewise, the ICBF relies heavily on Teagasc to get the better breeding message to farmers.

The ICBF is helping to lead the smart economy with regard to agriculture and delivers real economic benefits at the level of family farms of all sizes throughout the country. In 2009, Ireland was the first country in Europe and the second in the world to deliver genomic evaluations to its farmers. The ICBF, along with the breeding industry stakeholders, has played a key role in delivering more than €600 million of genetic gain to the Irish agri-industry since 2002. The work the ICBF does also plays a key role in helping to deliver the targets in the Food Harvest 2020 programme. The ICBF, along with the wider industry, has a key role in securing the ongoing viability of family farms in rural Ireland.