Mr. Bill Callanan:

The Food Wise 2025 strategy has a couple of clear ambitions within it. One of those is the creation of 23,000 extra jobs within the food industry in its broadest sense. Those jobs are predominantly rural-based.

This is a very important ambition to recognise in the context of the opportunity that Food Wise brings. As Mr. Nolan said, a significant conference will be held on 5 December on the ambition of Food Wise. I do not have data to confirm one way or another any expectation as to the number of farmers in ten years' time but I refer again to the ambition to create 23,000 jobs. We are moving towards that. At the same time the Department was grappling through a number of presentations, a challenge arose in respect of access to labour on farms across a number of sectors across Ireland, including horticulture and dairying, because of fuller employment in the general economy. I would not be as despondent about rural Ireland, particularly agriculture's contribution to it.