Dr. Stan Lalor:

As regards the Senator's question on farm safety, it is interrelated to how we educate our students in their awareness of farm safety. There is a wider issue here in our reach with farmers on that topic. I will highlight a few things. In recent years we have changed and increased our resources in this area, such as the number of people engaged full-time in health and safety and our advisory structure. We have separated internal health and safety issues from Teagasc and the people responsible for that from our outreach on health and safety to the farming community. That is an area in which we are very active, in both research and advisory activities. Regarding how we reach the wider clients, we obviously have reach with our clients but it is very important to reach the wider farming population as well. Our ConnectEd programme, which is mentioned in our briefing note, is trying to reach a wider area. On the one hand there are rural professionals working with this cohort of farmers with whom Teagasc might not have the same reach but the farmers themselves can also interact with that platform by attending webinars and various information outlets. Within the overall knowledge transfer approach in Teagasc there is the wider area of interconnectivity in the agricultural knowledge innovation system, AKIS. That is featuring very prominently in some of the discussions around European policy, particularly on CAP. Within our knowledge transfer activities we are very conscious of not just dealing with the farmers we have as clients in our system but also reaching those wider farmers and the professionals who engage with them, whether private consultants or people working in agri-input industries professional services and so on. That is an area in which we are active and want to continue developing more and more. Health and safety is particularly relevant and important.