Mr. Gerry Lynskey:

To respond to Deputy Ó Cuív's point, what has been lacking over the past ten years, in contrast to the previous five years, has been public private partnership. I know that statement is something of a cliché. It is a disgrace that only 30,000 of more than 100,000 farmers are using information technology. If the Department utilised and encouraged the private farm IT sector instead of ignoring it and casting it aside, we would be much further down the road. As Mr. Lynch stated, we do not have ambitions to computerise 100,000 farmers and, as Deputy Ó Cuív stated, it would not be commercially justified to do so. However, if the Department were to utilise the expertise and experience we have acquired over the past two or three decades, it could focus more on the 90,000 farmers who have not yet computerised. Instead, however, it has been developing facilities, even on its website, that are not necessary for legislative purposes. Even more to the point, it has encouraged and funded its subsidiaries to become involved in replicating commercial farm software - not software required for legislative purposes - that our companies have been providing for the past 20 years.