Mr. Barry Lynch:

Yes, it could be as high as 35,000. It is quite high. The Department will provide the figures, but the agfood.ie initiative is making great progress in this area and we have no issue with this whatsoever.

I refer back to Deputy Heydon's question about commercial software and the need for the State to carry out work in the commercial area. Reference was made to the numbers involved. The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, ICBF, carries out stock records, while Teagasc maintains financial and grassland records. The ICBF system is very good and has a great reputation. They are a good team, as are those in Teagasc. There are no issues with the quality of software anywhere. Before Christmas HerdPlus, the commercial end of the ICBF software, sold to a little under 8,000 clients. The two of us have sold to approximately 8,000 clients during the years also. We take the view that that company only achieved what we had achieved and that there was no need for it to do it in the first place.

The ICBF has doubled its client base in the past year or less because the State has taken certain measures. I am unsure whether the committee is familiar with two schemes in farming. One is the dairy efficiency programme, DEP, and the other is the beef technology adoption programme, BTAP. In the case of the BTAP, the Department has stipulated that one must use the ICBF HerdPlus software and pay the ICBF for it. The ICBF database has increased from 8,000 to approximately 15,000. Effectively, the State is paying farmers and cajoling them to buy this software and use it. That is not a sustainable way to increase the usage of software. If a farmer has no wish to get involved in using software, paying him or her to use it is not necessarily the right thing to do. This shows the focus of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on using software funded and created by itself, which brings us back to the balance between public and private.

Deputy Ó Cuív made some comments about getting more people to use information technology. For years I was the secretary of the Irish Society for Information Technology in Agriculture. We used to meet once each year and discuss how to get more farmers to use information technology. We have gone through all the arguments, including everything we have seen in our business during the years. The first 10,000 farmers will use information technology. They are data, information technology and business-focused. They are go-ahead farmers and the backbone of the 2020 vision. They are driving on and using data and information.

The ICBF found certain problems, even with all of the State support that it had received. Another problem is that the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Teagasc and the ICBF have a total focus on promoting the three State systems above everything else, but they could not get beyond where we had got to. There is a barrier of 10,000 commercial farmers who want our services. We might believe there is a given market. If there are 140,000 herds in the country, there should be 140,000 people using the agfood.ie website. We have no issue with this whatsoever and it would be great, but the market for commercial services is closer to 10,000 than 100,000. That is simply the way it is. The numbers using HerdPlus are significant because without State prompting to buy it, the company got to where we were. We reckon that we could have done the job and that the State need not have invested money in it. It is a question of whether the committee wants to keep putting State money on the line or whether it wants us to do it.

Having done it in the past, we can do it now and we have suggested to the Department that we do so. We are exporting the same software abroad and it is working extremely well.

To return to a question put to Mr. Lynskey, the position abroad is completely different from the position here. It is a different ball game in Britain, where there is no competition between the state and the private sector. I recently returned from a trip to China, where the state does not have any role in this area, although that would not be good either as the quality of State software here is top class. The agfood.iewebsite is as good as one will find anywhere in the world. We also recognise the qualities Teagasc brings to bear in all its activities. The position is similar in respect of the ICBF. However, one needs to strike a balance and figure out where to draw a line. That is the issue on which we wish to engage, having been involved in this process for many years. We need something to break the logjam and change the current approach. That is all we seek. The balance needs to be tilted a little and State expenditure reduced. This is not a bad message. Everyone knows we can do this and, therefore, we need to be allowed to do it.

To return to the question on numbers, if 140,000 people can log on, fill out area aid applications and complete other tasks on the agfood.iewebsite, it is good for everybody.