Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is something that is exercising my mind. The figure is 1 million young farmers lost from agriculture in the eight years between 2005 and 2013. That is supported by the figures from the Western Development Commission which show that 41% of people left agriculture in the 20 year period up to 2016. The witnesses are the auditors and part of their job is to examine whether the money we are spending is effective, being spent correctly and if there is value for money. I guess that the stark reality here is happening throughout Europe. I think of the west of Ireland and places such as Galway, Donegal, Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, Clare and Kerry and I wonder what type of country we will have 20 years hence. We will have a country with no people living in rural areas and big farmers who will be farming major portions of land. The same thing appears to be happening in Europe now.

The witnesses have given us the facts from the audit but there is one thing lacking. Have they proffered any solution? As the fall-off is so dramatic and given that there is an ageing population in farming, the Court of Auditors should not leave this for another ten years before it audits it. This is alarming. Year-on-year changes must be made to make sure it becomes effective. We must attract people back into farming. We must ensure that young people would prefer to be farming and making a reasonable living from it, rather than moving to the cities to work in factories, offices or whatever. Otherwise we will end up with rural Europe being devoid of people, services and communities. That is a huge problem. I have not found any comment from the auditors to indicate what they feel should be done. Having looked at the statistics do they think it is something that merits ongoing audit year-on-year rather than waiting for another ten years?

Also, the simplification we talked about earlier regarding Leader and so forth is probably reflected by farmers. Young people will walk away from this industry because there is too much hassle and not enough from it.