Mr. James Healy:

I thank the members for their questions, which I may take sequentially. In response to Senator Paul Daly's query, a lot of the material we put forward would have been more on the commercial side. The fear expressed by the Senator about the lost generation has also been considered by us. Similar to his story, there are many young farmers who go away or who may be encouraged to do another course first so they can have a career with farming as an option always there is the background.

They then get comfortable in their new careers. Why would they take up farming out in the rain, the cold and the muck when they could be making much better money working in a factory for less hours. This is why we believe it is absolutely vital that young people get involved in the responsibility for and the management of the farm as quickly as possible once they have completed their agricultural education. It will be very difficult on the smaller holdings, as Deputy Corcoran Kennedy has said. We are still trying to get our own heads around how this could be made possible. I believe that it comes back to giving more support to the smaller farmers and in front-loading the technology in that area first so they can become more viable.

On the education and labour aspects there probably needs to be more flexibility around the way younger people get their agricultural education. I did a green cert part time. It is a great avenue for those who have had other careers and then come back to farming. With regard to the scenario expressed by Senator Daly, I am aware that there have been some developments recently looking at doing agricultural qualifications through a formal apprenticeship. When we have more details on this it may offer some opportunities in the scenario painted by the Senator. The lost generation is a problem and it is possibly a generation that already passed. Our members are struggling with this issue, if I am to be brutally honest.

It ties in with Deputy McConalogue's comments on average income in the beef and sheep sectors. I am aware that there are also calls from other farm organisations for a €200 payment per suckler cow and we have also discussed this. Macra na Feirme, however, believes that the proper resourcing of the beef data and genomics programme, BDGP, and the encouragement of further good practice among those farmers, would be far more beneficial. When considering the efficiency of the beef herd and the conversion rates of our animals there are a lot of cows with quite long calving intervals. It is about increasing the efficiency of a herd so that farmers can make more of an income form the animals he or she has. Place the extra requirements on the farmer but reward him or her accordingly. We would see this as a better way of making those beef farmers more viable.

When one talks with beef and sheep farmers, and it is certainly the case among our members, very few of them are full time and probably have off-farm income along with it. If they can be offered flexibility to put something with the part-time job, or if they want to be as much of a full-time farmer as they can, it helps if they can have the opportunity to diversify as Deputy Corcoran Kennedy referred to. A number of beef farmers in west Cork, including one farmer who is organic farming, have started West Cork Farm Tours. For a price they will give tours of working farms. They have seen this to be extremely successful. It ties in with the tourism in the area. Maybe the tourism option would not be quite as successful in other parts of the country, but in those parts of the country it comes back to rewarding farmers for providing the public goods that they are delivering. Different parts of the country are built for different types of farming and for providing different types of public good. It is about rewarding those farmers for the good they are doing. We do not want to see land abandonment. Our former agricultural affairs vice-chairman was at our AGM over the weekend.

He said the difference between various parts of the country was that, as he drove out from Cavan and the further north he went, people were leaving the land to its own devices rather than farming bad parcels of land. Further to the south, as the land became better, he could see that people were putting something on it so they could make a couple of euro from it. It is about giving the farmer a reason to continue to farm that land and not to let it go into abandonment or go to waste. There is a need to put the right schemes in place to ensure they are doing that and being rewarded correctly for it.

In response to Deputy Corcoran Kennedy, our farmers have to become business people now. Once upon a time, farming was a vocation. There are no two ways about that. Given the levels of investment involved, the legislation and everything that goes with it, they are business people now. That draws a different type of person. Having judged the Teagasc student of the year awards this year, I was heartened greatly to see that some of the brightest and best were coming through the system. Farming is attracting some of our brightest and best and that gives me great hope for the future. That cohort certainly includes a very large number of women. Even compared to two or three years ago, I see a much larger number women involved in decision-making and taking up agricultural education. That is a very positive move. Most farmers would say that women often make even better farmers than men because they have that instinct to work with animals. It is changing over time but it is a mindset change that cannot just happen when someone snaps his or her fingers. We have a growing number of female members who are full-time farmers and we are delighted to see it.

All of the members referred to the age profile of farmers. Over 50% of farmers are over the age of 65 and while we do not want to force people off the land, we certainly want to give them the option of retiring should they wish to do so. More worrying is the fact that most of the deaths that occur on farms involve people over 65. We would not have people over 65 or 70 working on building sites, just as would not have children on building sites. Those two sections of society are the ones who suffer most on farms. It needs to be addressed and we need to be able to give older farmers the opportunity not to farm should they wish to stop.