Mr. Michael Doran:

I will make a few general points and deal with some of the points that were raised. I clarify that I wear a few hats and there were some jokes shared about that before I came into the meeting. I also chair the Teagasc beef stakeholder group in Grange because I am passionate about the industry. I spent four years at a national livestock chairman in the IFA. During that time I would have fought very hard for the ICBF, Teagasc and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to make more facilities available to farmers to free up the amount of time they spend inputting data into various different elements and to get the data back to farmers in a manner that would help them farm level. A number of Deputies and Senators raised the issue of data. The data originates on farms in the first place in that it is a farmer who inputs it. Therefore, it is farmers' data and I strongly believe they have an entitlement to get the best use out of it and it should be got back to them in a manner that is useful to them.

Originally I would have put a lot of pressure on the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine regarding agfood, the registration of calves online, and the herd register. From the outset my view on the herd register, with which some people would differ, is that it was only been used as a means to penalise if they had an inspection at farm level. That was the only use I could see being made of it. My recollection was that we were promised at the start that when the national database was up and running correctly there would be no need for the herd register at farm level, the blue book that was being filled in. Many farmers would have got packages on the farm to deal with the herd register element at the start, but many people could not afford it or were not computer literate. We have got to the stage now where farmers can register calves and notify their movements on line. They can do it on a smartphone, they do not need to do it on a computer. The herd register is available online to farmers. It is a matter of moving with the times and that development is helpful.

Access to agfood has been great from a farmer's point of view and it has removed some of the paperwork that was involved. It has been a major saving to the Department. With every calf that is registered online there is less of a manual input required by the Department and less postage involved. The same applies to the suckler cow welfare scheme, which was raised by a number of members. There is a difference of approximately €10 in the cost of administering that scheme online as against through the paper format

It was set up initially to benefit the farmer but the knock-on effect is the genetic evaluations that have been possible because of the information coming through the system as a result of the suckler cow welfare scheme. As a farmer I urge the members to apply as much pressure as possible for the maintaining of that scheme, the five year period for which is due to expire at the end of the year. In terms of the benefit of that scheme, especially in regard to Food Harvest 2020, from a beef perspective we must see that data continue to roll out. It is crucial that we try to capture that data in the future without losing the benefits we have seen.

From a Teagasc point of view, I can sometimes be critical of Teagasc from the point of view that there is not more work done with students on the area of technology. It has been raised here also. In terms of grass measuring, Teagasc pioneered that, at least from an Irish point of view, and put the package together, including the profit monitor and so on, but I take one or two students every year and it amazes me that some of them are good at it and want to take it on. That is why I welcomed Deputy Barry's point on a ten-year plan. We should ensure that every student that comes through the system is at least computer literate and that by the time they leave the agriculture college they are able to use the technologies available. Do we want to go back to the time of the analogue phone in the office? Mobile phones have evolved into smartphones. Technology is allowing us to drive forward and to become more sustainable and focused as farmers. It is crucial for us to examine how we can move that technology on to be of further benefit to us as farmers and identify the areas where there are deficits that we could look to improve.

The BTAP programme for beef farmers started this year and one of the conditions of that was people had to sign up and become a member of HerdPlus. I support making it compulsory for farmers who were in the BTAP programme to be signed up to HerdPlus for a number of reasons. First, there is an adviser, whether it is a Teagasc adviser or a private planner, who deals with it and, second, the amount of information available for a particular farm because all this information is in a computer. All HerdPlus does is put it together to give that data back out to allow people make decisions on it.

The first year I joined HerdPlus I got a report stating I had a calving interval of 424 days. I rubbished it because I also have an on-farm package. I told HerdPlus that could not be the case because my herd was far better than that. The second year I got it HerdPlus said I had a 421-day calving interval. On further analysing it with a Teagasc adviser I realised I was rolling cows over, so to speak, from the spring to the autumn calving and from autumn calving to spring calving. This year I managed to get it down to 372 days. That is an extra calf for every seven or eight cows on the farm as a result of that one piece of information becoming available. We need to get more from the information we put in on registering calves. That is the only bit of information a farmer puts in. The rest comes from factories, marts and various other elements. We must see what more information we can get to help us, first, reach our Food Harvest 2020 targets and, second, to determine if we can exceed those because there is a growing demand for food and we should examine how we can drive that on further, and from a technology point of view also.

Those are the points I wanted to make. I have looked at a number of websites and many other people are making packages available free of charge be it the Irish Farmers' Association through its i-Farm or the Irish Farmers' Journal. Many people are putting cash flow planners and various things on websites. Those tools are available to farmers. The more penetration we can get of that, the more advances we can make as farmers in the industry as a whole.