Mr. Joe Healy:

We do. Mr. James Staines is our legal adviser and he is available to any of our people. As the Deputy correctly says, 30% of farmers are over 65 and over half our farmers are over 55, with just 6% under 35. There are a number of problems. The first is the very low levels of income from farming and the Teagasc farm survey pinpoints that, particularly in the dry stock sectors where the direct payments account for over 100% of the average farm income. Mr. Martin Stapleton is our farm business chairman and much of our lobbying is focused on trying to ease the burden of the transfer of farms. This is one example but there are also inheritance tax and stamp duty incentives that we seek on a yearly basis. All the members have attended our lobby days on such matters as it can be a very costly time for farmer families. When people take over farms, other members of the family may need to be educated. If a person takes over a farm now, it must look after two families, namely, that person's family and his or her parents.

We could say that everything we do is about improving the farmer's lot, income and making a farm more attractive to the next generation. It is about easing the burden and cost of transfer. Much of that involves providing advice through our staff network of offices around the country and people like Ms O'Sullivan being made available to these farmers. This is a case in point where there is such fear. I repeat our very clear requests. I take Mr. Redmond's point that he hopes the drafting of the Bill will start soon but how long is a bit of string in that context? With all due respect, "soon" can mean next week to some people and next year to others. We would prefer a more definite period. This has been going on for so long now and it has caused so much anxiety. It was one of the key issues in my election campaign this time four years ago. I went into houses where people were hamstrung by the cost of care. We want the Bill to be drafted immediately because this has been going on for long enough. If there are issues which are not clear now, I am not sure another four or six years will clarify them either.

Deputy Murphy O'Mahony has correctly highlighted the issue of retrospection and we want that to be applied from July 2018, when the Government approved the proposal. We also want the leasee to be included in eligibility criteria and for the clawback issue to be sorted out to avoid undermining the impact of an unknown cost of care on the future value of the assets. These four requests are very clear and there is no more or no less. We cannot be clearer than that at this stage.