Mr. Martin Ryan:

On the advisory aspect, what is really motivating us to provide a good specialist technical advisory service is the evidence from the profit monitors on the calf to beef programmes which show an enormous difference between average income and the top one third. There is huge scope for improvement in that regard. The main reason a person might fall out of beef production is the lack of being able to drive his or her output figure. With reference to the 513 farms in the profit monitor of the calf to beef programmes in 2017, the difference in output per hectare between the average and the top one third was 362 kg. The difference in value of output per hectare was €855. That is an enormous gap which must be closed if people are to produce beef sustainably, which is the objective of the technical team. A large part of it is driven by good grassland management, more than by anything else. The objective is to get good lifetime performance from cattle and keep costs under control. That is the angle from which we are coming and we will have a number of specialist advisers working to that end. In addition, we have had discussions with some of the Teagasc specialists. There will be room for their involvement where there are specialist skills that can be used. We will have workshops and particular farms we will visit to demonstrate those skills. That is a critical aspect of our work because there is a great deal of low-hanging fruit. To translate the figures into costs per kilogram of live weight, the difference between the top one third and the average in the calf to beef systems is 50 cent. It is a serious difference. Our goal is to ensure all of the available potential is harvested.