Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming in and for their presentation. I will not repeat many of the points in the questions I was going to ask. It was mentioned in the presentation that a key point for farmers is the necessity to build up a cash reserve and that other countries have methods of dealing with this while in Ireland it is voluntary. When other countries are referred to, does that mean subsidies? How do other countries do it? What options are open to us? I believe it is possible in the US to have insurance against price volatility. Is that something the witnesses see us being able to do here? How could we go about that?

The point about staff in Teagasc is taken on board. I was going to raise my concerns about the basic payment scheme, but as the Chairman said, we are probably going to work on this as a committee and follow up on it ourselves, so I take that as noted.

On the diversification of the rural economy and enhanced quality of life in rural Ireland, are there any links between Teagasc and the Leader programme as it is rolled out? While it is all well and good to have aspirations, and I completely agree that agriculture is going to have to be the key driver of regeneration in rural Ireland, if much is to be done then money is key. Does Teagasc have any interaction with Leader? If it does not, could it access funding through the Leader programme? In what areas does Teagasc see that money could be spent to enhance its goal?

In the overall context of discussing the dairy industry, concerns were raised last year about the beef herd being a subset or spin-off of our dairy herd as opposed to being an entity in its own right. There are concerns that this could happen with further dairy expansion. Could the committee hear the witnesses' views on that and how best to avoid that happening?