Professor Gerry Boyle:

It is through our series of programmes. The most important driver of rural development, in our view, is having viable family farms. That filters down into the rural community, if we can establish solid income-earning farms. That is the first requirement. That part of the world is similar to where I live. I live in a relatively remote and challenging area. We would emphasise the work that we do on sheep production there. We have an active programme under way involving both research at our site in Athenry, which we try to promulgate the messages from, and what we call a better sheep programme, an advisory programme which involves selecting a number of farms around the country that can demonstrate how commercial sheep production can be enhanced. Similarly, with beef, I committed to establishing a beef demonstration farm in the west. We have located one in Athenry for a number of years. That demonstrates to farmers in those regions how they can improve their income-earning activity. On top of that, a big part of this programme relates to succession planning and assisting farmers in moving the farm from one generation to the next.