Dr. Stan Lalor:

I have responsibility for the wider knowledge transfer area which includes education and the advisory service. We put those together within the organisation because we very much see the interaction with the farmers as a continuum of those two services. More and more, they are overlapping. One does not have a farmer coming through a course who suddenly becomes educated and then advice is all they need. Ongoing training and facilitation are needed as well.

A point was made that some farmers are struggling with rules and regulations, as well as ensuring they are meeting all the requirements and paperwork of various schemes. An ongoing challenge for our advisory service is to be sufficiently resourced in terms of being able to help the farmers who require support from us. We must also balance this with full-time high-tech farmers who have development needs in terms of their businesses and farm development opportunities. It is quite a range for our advisers to span but that is what we continue to try to do as much as possible.

For the high-tech end, we are developing the area of continuous professional development for farmers. Mr. Pettit mentioned the education vision programme. One of its recommendations was that education does not stop when one walks out of the college or when one graduates with a green certificate. It is an ongoing process, particularly with the challenges in the sector between sustainability and climate. Being able to reach and help farmers in terms of the evolving requirements of all that is something on which we are keen.

We are launching a programme in Teagasc called the Evolve programme geared towards helping and reaching farmers by recognising the farmers who participate and engage in those types of development, training exercises and activities in that they can record and get credit for that. The programme is in development.