Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was not present for the initial discussion. I was at the Balmoral show earlier and I am only back now. All of the people in that part of the world send their best wishes.

I have one or two points that I wish to raise. Broadly in many parts of rural Ireland there is a dire need for the concept of alternative or additional farm enterprise. We have many small farmers across the vast areas of the north west, where the holdings are very small. In effect, it is unprofitable for those individuals to farm their properties. They cannot make a living from their farms alone. They need off-farm activity in order to make a living or they need to be doing something additional on their farms. In the 1980s and 1990s, the then Department for Agriculture and Food funded various alternative farm enterprises. Many farmers went into mushroom production, some went into keeping chickens or turkeys. What happened was that the pressure of economies of scale came into play in all of those industries. In order to survive, one had to either become a very big producer or get out of the sector.

I used to work in the mushroom industry and I worked with growers all over the west of Ireland. In many parts of Galway, Roscommon, Mayo and all over the country, there were growers with five and six mushroom tunnels. They all went to the wall and the one that had 30 or 40 tunnels kept going. There is a dire need to try to do something to make the small farm viable. Representatives of Macra na Feirme were in yesterday evening saying that a farm almost had to be able to keep two families as the older people and younger people coming on had to get a living from it. Most farms in many parts of the country cannot do that. It can only be done if there is an alternative enterprise on the farm that can work for these people but they need assistance to be able to establish that enterprise. It is an opportunity for the Department in particular because it has a focus on rural areas and matters of deprivation, as referenced by Deputy O'Keeffe. We need to find some way of making the family farm a viable entity. If we can do that, we could sustain many more parts of rural Ireland. It will require money and assistance.

I was at the Balmoral show today and there was a food tent that was full of family businesses. People were growing potatoes and they discovered they were not getting the price of them so they started to mash them. Now they have a different product to sell. The same thing is happening with cheeses and various other products. For people to be able to do this they need the assistance of the Government and that little leg up. There is an opportunity in that regard.

I know the Minister has probably been beaten with the following matter several times regarding rural social schemes and the work being done in them. It is a very good scheme and it is working well but the problem we have is that many people are looking to get on it, with community projects that have the work to do, but the JobPath people are getting letters for jobs that do not exist. I know an elderly woman who might beat me across the head if she heard me calling her elderly who was called into JobPath. She is in her early 60s and she had looked after her parents, who had passed away. She was seeking a job but does not drive a car. She lives 35 miles away from the JobPath centre. She had to go twice a week to the centre to learn how to write a CV for a job that does not exist, which is nonsense. If she could get on some scheme, she would be happy enough to do that and the community would be quite happy to have her. There must be some common sense brought into this. The direction of JobPath, etc., is causing a problem so there must be greater co-operation between this Department and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection in that regard.

I see the Minister of State, Deputy Kyne, is here. There is a proposal for a new by-law for pike fishing. Perhaps we could get a briefing on that at some point as we must look at it.