Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is a reasonable response. I have to make the point however that many people among the forgotten farmers had to make serious lifestyle choices. When they left school they were faced with the problem of how to get anything from their farm and whether farming was a realistic option. We have been a long time looking for the forgotten farmer scheme, to the point that it was a key ask in the programme for Government. For many of those people the obvious thing was to do an apprenticeship, when things were going better, and take up a trade in construction. This has been less so in subsequent years. If it were the case that the set criteria of level 6 were to be an à la carteapproach we could do a great deal to appease or assist many farmers if there was some discretion on that educational qualification. We are not looking for it to be minimised below level 6 but it should be a level 6 agriculture or any other area. That is just my observation.