Ms Helen Doherty:

Social Farming is an outcome-based placement on ordinary working farms. It is a simple but powerful concept that gives people who have challenges in their lives the opportunity to engage in ordinary everyday activities on ordinary working Irish family farms in their local community. The support is based on the relationship that develops between the people and the farmers, the families on the farm and the wider communities. People avail of the natural environment, connecting with the seasons, nature, plants and animals, which are all hugely beneficial for people with challenges.

There are four main areas of benefit for people in social farming, relating to mental health, skills development, social connections and physical health. On mental health, there is evidence of benefits for people as it gives them purpose and meaning in life, gives them valued social roles, connects them with nature, animals, plants and the landscape and gives them a sense of achievement. Often it is about getting the opportunity to care for somebody or for things such as plants and animals, instead of just being the receiver of care. It builds people's self-esteem, confidence and personal capacity. There are always skills to be learned on a farm, from farming skills to life skills. Building wider social connections is important for people. People build new relationships and a wider relationship with the community that exists around any farm, creating a wider personal network. There are also physical health benefits for people involved in social farming. In a very natural way, people end up doing a lot more physical activity, even if it is just walking.

The farmers we work with receive extensive training. Farms can be risky environments so we take our farmers through an extensive training process of about 25 or 30 hours. When they have completed that training, we follow up with HSE-approved safeguarding training. We do extensive health and safety training, we vet our farmers and we prepare them for practice. They comply with our standards of practice and reach that minimum standard before we work with them. Our team across the country continues to support the placements as they become active.

This has all been made possible through support and funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Successive Ministers have been very supportive, from the early days with Deputy Coveney, subsequently with Deputy Creed and now with Deputy McConalogue, who was on a farm in Donegal very recently. Our farmers are paid for the time they devote. One of the first things I say to any farmer is that there is no point doing social farming if they do not have time to devote to people. They are giving up that day to spend time with people and there are also additional costs involved in setting a farm up for social farming in a lot of instances, although not always.

Social farming taps into the existing assets in rural Ireland, that is, the farm, the farmer and the community around them. It taps into something that is very valuable. We are responding to the demand for social farming right now. People are exercising their choice to receive care and support in different ways and one of the choices people are opting for right now is social farming. We are experiencing quite significant demand for social farming right across the country. These are local solutions to local problems and people do not have to leave their area. Some people travel some distances to go to farms but generally it is within a 20 km radius. People are becoming more visible as a result of their activity and getting involved in the farm. They will be involved, for example, in going to the local co-op or the mart and in the different activities that go on in the normal run of things on a farm. We are breaking down barriers at community level. That responds to Government policy because we are achieving better outcomes for our citizens and providing good value for money. Social farming is a stepping stone to the workplace. People come to social farming seeking outcomes in their lives and we help them achieve those outcomes. Social farming brings together the natural environment in an enjoyable and ordinary way and delivers significant benefits for lots of people.

Who are Social Farming Ireland? Social Farming came from a pilot programme that was run by Leitrim Development Company, which was the rural development partner, University College Dublin, UCD, and Queen's University Belfast. Originally, it was a cross-Border programme. Subsequently, we then got funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and we now offer social farming opportunities to people right across the country.

We have approximately 150 farms on our books at the moment on which people have received training and are ready for practice. We have trained in excess of 600 people across the country. We have delivered 13,500 placement days to 1,400 participants. We expect to deliver roughly 5,000 placement days this year because we are back in full swing again and back to exceeding our 2019 levels. We expect that figure of 1,400 participants to exceed 2,000 participants this year. We have worked with more than 300 health and social care organisations right across the country.

If members would like to hear more about social farming, we have an upcoming conference in Killashee Hotel on 1 June. That is something that will hopefully be of interest to people. I will hand over to Mr. Smyth now for some more remarks.