Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 October 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food

Social Farming: Discussion

2:00 am

Mr. Joseph McCrohan:

That is correct. We are from Kerry and we look after Kerry. We are very proud of that. We have 40 farmers doing this in Kerry now. We are under savage pressure because farmers are telling more farmers about the success of this project, and they want to join. We need to manage the project with facilitators on the ground. We put our money into the facilitators on the ground. We do not pay farmers. We do not pay Kerry footballers to play for Kerry. We do not pay farmers. The principle of volunteering is the principle of our project, and we are very proud of it. If we want to pay farmers, we do it with a lot of other schemes, such as the rural social scheme, the water schemes and the whole plethora. If we want to get more money to farmers, we have lots of ways of doing that. However, if we wanted to pay farmers the rates that they should be paid for doing this, we would be looking for a minimum of €1 million-plus, and we would gladly write the cheques.

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