Mr. Joseph McCrohan:

It is a major problem. The availability of commercial property must be looked at. It must be done through communities. If a commercial individual has a property through family circumstances anything can happen the property. If IDA Ireland or other organisations have it, they might not have the same commitment or focus on the rural area. In a project we are developing in Sneem at present, in conjunction with the local authority, the community is developing an enterprise space. I hope it will attract enterprise. If that enterprise decides to move on, the community will still own the space and can do the next thing with it. If communities can own so many GAA pitches throughout the country, why can they not own enterprise units for their GAA players or other people in the community to work in? Communities need to move away from purely community services. They must move into community enterprises and creating jobs for their people. The co-operative movement has been hugely beneficial to rural Ireland but it probably stopped approximately 25 years ago. Perhaps Deputy Ó Cuív will tell me exactly when. There have not been many new co-operatives formed. We formed the Ring of Kerry Quality Lamb Society Limited co-operative in recent years, where 23 sheep farmers directly sell their lamb. It is very successful and has created seven jobs. There could be many more of these in the country.

Farmers need assistance. They need a target group to inform them of the various programmes that we are delivering. They need an enterprise officer or an officer to meet them, to attend meetings at night, to work with them and to cajole them because they do not have a lot of money to invest and every step one takes needs to be done well and carefully. We have an enterprise co-op and a transnational beef co-op. We have a south Kerry beef replacement heifer co-op that is connected to the beef data and genomics programme. It is amazing that the greatest take up of the beef data and genomics programme was in Caherciveen, which is the furthest away from Leinster House. That was due to a group in that location that worked as a co-operative.