Mr. John Joe Fitzgerald:

I agree with what the Senator said. We need to have more staff on the ground. We need to get Teagasc and everybody else involved. We need to make them sell farm assist to the farmers. As well as that, we need to make the inspectors farmer-friendly. I am just making that point. Farm assist is there to help to sustain the farmer. It is not as though we are looking for extra money to be taken from payments or anything like that. The money is there, but we must give the farmer the opportunity to hold on to some of that money. It would make things a lot better. If we lose the farmers, especially the small farmers on the west coast of Ireland or any rural part of Ireland, that will have a knock-on effect on tourism and everything else. I come from a Gaeltacht area. There is a lot of emigration out of the area at the moment with lads and girls leaving. They look at their parents at home who are struggling. They are on farm assist. One would not blame them for emigrating. If we can make it that what farmers have, they can hold onto and can improve themselves and make themselves more sustainable going forward, we might keep the farmers in rural Ireland and we might keep our heritage and culture there as well. If we lose these farmers because they are constantly in poverty, we will lose everything else with it.