Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Professor Boyle for his presentation. My first question is about the education programme in Teagasc and the colleges. It might not be relevant to the annual report but every year I encounter a number of students who have applied for grants to Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, rather than to Teagasc for attending college. They always get caught by SUSI because it does not tell them until the end of the process that they are not covered for Teagasc colleges. In fairness to Teagasc, it is very good about accepting late applications. However, perhaps it is something Teagasc could make students aware of at an earlier stage, so they do not take the SUSI route. Regardless of what one tries to tell SUSI, it waits until the very end until it tells them they are not eligible, and that is usually after the closing date for Teagasc applications.

Regarding dairy pricing, like Deputy Ó Cuív I would be interested to hear about the size of the farms and herds in the bottom 10% and top 10%, in terms of the profitability and so forth. It is clear from Professor Boyle's presentation that there will be a fair degree of rationalisation within the dairy sector over the next number of years. Has Teagasc conducted any research into how great that will be? Looking at the figures, it appears that the bottom 10% and probably the bottom 20% will be squeezed out, because they do not appear to be able to sustain the volatility.

There is a chart showing the total costs, a breakdown of the costs and the profitability. It shows a total cost of 22.9 cent per litre. On the next chart there is an average cost of 27.4 cent per litre for 2013. What accounts for the difference between those two cost figures? It would make a difference to the viability of farms.

We were given a presentation previously in which it was said that farmers should concentrate on grass-rich production in order to keep costs down in dairying into the future. I always understood we had grass-rich production. How much capacity is there to produce more grass to enable costs to be kept down? The input costs for dairy farmers in the North in terms of feed are approximately four times the costs in the South. If it will be necessary to produce more feed in order to increase production, that will obviously affect the margin as well. Is there much spare capacity within the dairy sector to produce more grass to sustain larger numbers of cows on farms?