Mr. Peter Farrelly:

We have looked for the Government to put training in place with us but we have had no feedback on that. Many of our people are trained and training is available. Most staff have lorry licences, but the biggest problem a contractor has is that when he gets a driver a lorry licence, the driver is gone to the hauliers. We are no different from the hauliers. There is a big scarcity of help. No young lad wants to come contracting due to the unsocial hours. We need something to try to keep these people in rural Ireland and to get them working. There should be no reason for unemployment for young lads in rural Ireland because there is plenty of work in the agri sector.

Tractor tickets are available and it is probably costing €2,000 per man each year to get those tickets for driving and doing the work. We are not much different from the hauliers. We have tickets and we have training facilities. There is a lot of expense and it is more the case that people do not know the training is available. We signed up last year for a training course for our tractor drivers and it was launched at our conference last year. This means that operators know they are not just sitting up on a tractor and driving it. Drivers need to be trained because our tractors and machines are so costly. We would like support from the Government to try to get a training programme and apprenticeships going so that, when people have three years done on a machine, they have a ticket to show they are competent drivers.