Professor Gerry Boyle:

That is the challenge. It is a combination of intensive advisory activity and, albeit it is not my area, putting policy support behind that.

For example, on the solar panels, every Teagasc dairy farm in the first instance will have photovoltaic, PV, panels, hopefully, by the end of next year, as will all our colleges. That is a no-brainer as far as I am concerned. We are hoping to work with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland.

Senator Mulherin asked about the technological universities. We have partnerships with virtually all the institutes of technology and with UCD and UCC. We are not directly involved in any of the discussions around the establishment of the new universities, except in that a lot of the universities will want Teagasc to support their research activity. For example, I mentioned the Walsh fellowship programme which funds 250 PhD students. A number of those would be within institutes of technology and we would expect the number to increase with the technological universities. Our partnership would be more at that end. We have very strong partnerships with Dundalk, Waterford and Cork Institutes of Technology, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, GMIT, and a number of others.