Mr. Sean Coughlan:

I thank the Chairman and members of the joint committee for the invitation to appear. I welcome the opportunity to provide some information to the committee on the ICBF and our role in the agriculture industry.

I will take this opportunity to provide the committee with information on the functions of ICBF. The ICBF was established in 1998, as a non-profit,"'industry good", non-State body following many years of discussion on how the Irish cattle breeding industry might be better organised to remove duplication and increase the rate of genetic gain in our cattle. It is a unique organisation with its shareholders combining the farm organisations, the milk recording organisation, AI organisations along with the dairy and beef associations. Thus it is owned one way or another by farmers. It provides services directly and indirectly to all farmers in Ireland. It is a genuine example of the potential of a co-operative type infrastructure when operated to its full capability.

ICBF created a database to provide the information needed for effective cattle breeding decisions at all levels in the industry. The most difficult aspect of any database is establishing timely flows of clean, accurate and comprehensive data. One of the key features of the ICBF database infrastructure is the removal of duplication and data collection. For example in 1998, a dairy farm involved the milk recording and herd book registrations would have to communicate on five different occasions regarding a single calving event. By 2002, with the introduction of ICBF animal events, only one notification of that event was required to satisfy all cattle breeding requirements. This has saved costs, increased data accuracy, increased farmer participation and made cattle breeding information more relevant and valuable to all Irish farmers.

ICBF has a core annual budget in the region of €6 million. In broad terms, the federation's income comes in the form of a tag contribution from farmers, a departmental operating grant to cover activities that it took over from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, service income and national development plan capital grants. The federation employs 71 people and is based in rural west Cork. It also contracts a further 30 people in the provision of weight recording and linear score services throughout rural Ireland.

ICBF generates genetic evaluations, that is breeding values, for animals based on the ancestry and performance data available nationally and internationally. It is licensed by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to generate national genetic evaluations. Genetic evaluations can identify breeding lines that give more output, for example, more meat for the same level of the inputs, and feed. The outcome of the process is a breeding index for the animals expressed in euros which farmers can use to make a breeding decision.

All 75,000 breeding herds nationally benefit from these evaluations.

To facilitate the generation of genetic evaluations, the ICBF collects animal performance data from a wide variety of sources including: calf registration and animal movement data, in conjunction with the systems of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; artificial insemination data; milk recording data; slaughter data; mart data; DNA genomic data; health data; and on-farm performance data, which is becoming increasingly important as the focus switches to cost of production profit traits.

The ICBF plays a central role in beef and dairy breeding schemes. These breeding schemes identify the sires that will deliver maximum genetic gain to the commercial herds, and ensure that the next generation of livestock is more profitable than the previous generation.

The ICBF also engages with cattle breeders across the country, directly and indirectly, delivering breeding information so that farmers can make profitable decisions at the individual farm level. This happens in a number of ways. Bull proofs are made available to the breeding organisations. The publicly available bull search has over 3 million individual searches per year. HerdPlus, the ICBF's breeding information service, provides farmers with a mixture of paper and web-based tools for making informed breeding decisions. There is also engagement with stakeholders to increase awareness of the value of using breeding information to increase profitability at farm level.

The ICBF generates and distributes breeding information, which farmers can use to make profitable breeding decisions. It communicates this information using a variety of different technologies. One of the key challenges for the ICBF is to get the wider farming population to engage with that breeding information and realise that it has a key role to play in securing the long-term sustainability of farming in Ireland. The beef data and genomics programme is playing a key positive role in this regard, with a positive trend in replacement index now being seen for the first time. This is key for the sustainability of the national suckler herd. The calving interval has reduced from 407 days in 2014 to 393 days in beef data and genomics programme herds. We have seen similar performance improvements in calves per cow per year, which have gone from 0.8 to 0.87 in beef data and genomics programme herds.

The ICBF's ability to operate efficiently and effectively depends on its ability to utilise technology to its maximum in the capture of data, the calculation of breeding values through genetic evaluations and the dissemination of the resultant information out to commercial farmers for use in their day to day breeding decisions.

The ICBF is an organisation that caters for the needs of all breeders in Ireland, small and large. Genetic improvement is now playing a key role in helping to sustain the smaller, less profitable beef farms in the north and west of the country. These farms now have access to independent data from the ICBF when buying breeding stock, helping to identify animals which will improve profitability.

The ICBF is helping to lead the smart economy in agriculture, and it is delivering real economic benefits at the level of family farms, of all sizes, across the country. Ireland is operating the largest beef genomics project in the world. The result of genetic progress in the industry means 2018-born beef animals are €20 million more profitable than those born before the genomics technology was introduced. As a country, we cannot afford to ignore the advances in technology that can deliver increase gains at farm level. The nature of genetic gain is that it is cumulative and permanent, thus the industry will have that profitability gain annually on an ongoing basis, and this will continue grow.

The ICBF, along with the breeding industry stakeholders, has played a key role in delivering over €600 million of genetic gain to the Irish agri-industry since 2002 across dairy and beef. The work that the ICBF does is also playing a key role in helping to deliver the targets in the Foodwise 2025 programme. The ICBF, along with the wider industry, has a key role in securing the ongoing viability of family farms in rural Ireland.