Professor Frank O'Mara:

In terms of farmers who have a private consultant to do their schemes work, we do not want to be cutting across those consultants and trying to steal their clients. We would very much like to involve them. Farmers will come to us and make the plan and we would hope that their consultant would then engage with them in the implementation of that plan. We are there to help. Some of the things we would be doing with farmers who develop a plan would include things like introducing clover. We will support farmers with that by telling them there is a farm walk on clover in their area next week that they should go along to, that there is a clover group that they should join and so on. That kind of activity will be available to clients or non-clients and we will direct them towards that.

In terms of the 50,000 farmers, we are not going to pick the biggest farmers but they are the ones that are probably going to come. The 50,000 biggest farmers are responsible for approximately 85% of the emissions so hopefully we will reach out to those who have the most actions to take. It is a big challenge to get 50,000 farmers into the programme. We are afraid that some day we will open the door and there will be nobody else looking to come in and do the programme but for the moment there is very good engagement. We are working through discussion groups and the ACRES courses, and farmers are up for the challenge. They want to feel that they are doing something and the Signpost programme will give them visibility in the sense of being able to say that they have a plan. We certainly hope to add another 20 or 30 advisers over the next two years to support implementation. Perhaps Dr. Lalor has something to add on this.