Mr. Brian Smyth:

We came into this with a pilot project that was INTERREG-funded. It covered 12 counties – the six counties of Northern Ireland and six in the South – between 2011 and 2014. When we met officials from the Department of agriculture, and we actually met Ms Sinéad McPhillips, who was the chief economist at the time and who has just been appointed Secretary General, and Simon Coveney, who was the then Minister, and they said at the time they wanted to see an expansion of social farming right across the country and they were going to put some funding in place to establish a national network. We bid for that funding to build the national network. We now have farms from Malin Head to Loop Head and from the Cooley Mountains to Bantry and everywhere in between. We have 200 farms and we are funded to do that. The model we operate is that those farms are established through the funding we receive from the Department of agriculture and they then progress through getting paid for the placements and support they provide, whether that is through Vision Ireland, RehabCare or whoever. The support the farmers give is as valued as it would be if it were given by some other service provider.

It is just happening in a different place with a different set of circumstances and it interests and helps people in a very different way than, say, going to a RehabCare centre in the centre of town. That is the difference. We are reforming service provision. That is why what Mr. McGreehan has just said is vitally important - that the reform of service follows the innovation that farmers provide and provides that new response to people's needs and funds it in a different way. That is what has been difficult. Agriculture has grasped that and funded the development of social farming, the models we have here, which have been very generous at that in many ways. Obviously, everything could be more generous. If we had the €100,000 for every county it would be great but we do not. What we have to do is find a way that this will manifest. What we did was we called it Social Farming Ireland and branded it as a national network. We have the lead contract in Leitrim Development Company but we are delivering a national contract, a national network that involves all of the players, about 350 service providers including disability, mental health and also schools. We have had LCA students come out from schools who have been struggling to stay in school to finish their exams, even the junior certificate, where a period on a farm helps their interest and learning. Really, what we are saying here today is that all these other Departments need to step up like agriculture did. They must step up. That would be a great help to both the Kerry model and to what we are doing.