Professor Gerry Boyle:

I will ask my colleague Dr. O'Dwyer to deal with some of the dairy questions, although there are a few general points to be made.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked about pensions. Clearly, pension costs are a big drag on our grant-in-aid, as can be seen from the figures. The number of pensioners now significantly exceeds the number of staff. I hope the ratio will not deteriorate too much, but I certainly do not see the balance being reversed in the near future. Our hope is that we will have stability. At least, the position is transparent in our case. There are many agencies and Departments in which the same issue arises. However, because of our accounting standards we are obliged to calculate the actuarial cost of pensions and the point is well made.

The Deputy also made a good point about the indirect support for Teagasc through various EU schemes. In recent years this support has decreased substantially because of the disbandment of the REPS which was a massive programme for Teagasc. It was not that we made a profit as such, but we were enabled to recruit a large number of staff to process the applications and had to recover the full cost, which was a requirement of the scheme. In recent years, obviously, the removal of the REPS has been a significant factor in the reduction in our staff numbers.

The basic payments scheme continues to be a very important source of activity for us. While the fees are relatively modest, at €145, for a relatively small income unit, nonetheless it is very significant when it is all added. Probably 40% of our clients fall into that category.

This raises a point which is related to something Deputy Pat Deering said. We are looking at this area very closely because, alongside the work on the issue of scheme support, we have a remit to support development on farms. Farmers are - I will not say willingly - more prepared to pay for something that will benefit them directly such as support in applying for the singe farm payment, now the basic payments scheme, a GLAS payment, etc. They are slightly more reluctant, although this has changed somewhat, to contribute to membership of a discussion group. When the dairy expansion scheme was introduced - it was a subsidy for farmers to join discussion groups - we received an increase which lasted for three years. We retained a significant number of these farms and were pleasantly surprised. Once farmers joined a discussion group for the first time, they realised there were benefits to be gained over and above the grants they were receiving. It took a little persuasion, but they stayed in the scheme.

Over the longer term, farmers appreciate that what we might call development support is of benefit to them in helping them to generate sustainable income.

Over time, even if we were to stabilise advisory numbers at present levels, we will need to look very carefully at the extent to which we are involved in what might be called scheme-support activity because of the pressure of work, particularly at this time of year and especially in the dairy area. For the past couple of months, most of our advisers have been tied up with applications for GLAS, single farm payments, the young farmers scheme etc., when I think we all agree they should be out on the farms supporting farmers. We will see a shift from that type of activity and more towards development.

The Deputy asked a number of questions about the planners. I have some answers for him but I do not have all the answers. I propose that I submit a detailed response on that. I agree with the Deputy. Our assessment is also that there are about 450 qualified planners. Most of them would be in Teagasc, but they are people who are fully engaged in other activities, and that was one of the reasons we did not and could not get directly involved in GLAS planning, as it is called. That is why we entered into a strategic alliance with FRS.

FRS has recruited 80 qualified planners. In our assessment, certainly that is capable of achieving our aim. As Deputies know, in the first tranche of GLAS 30,000 will be accepted. We have targeted about 8,000 of our clients and we think we have enough planners to do that. They are under huge pressure because the deadline is tight; we would like more time. We anticipated a much longer planning period, as I think everyone did.