Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 December 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Common Agricultural Policy and Young Farmers: Engagement with Macra na Feirme

Mr. John Keane:

I thank the Deputy for the questions and I might ask Mr. Dillon to come in on some of them. On the land mobility service, we have received Department funding for a number of years and that has been increased to €100,000, which the Deputy probably saw last week. That is welcome and much appreciated. The service has a footprint and there is support for it through a number of the dairy co-operatives. That footprint is based around where that support is coming from geographically. There are areas of the country, be it in the south, the south west or the west, where the service has a limited capacity because the funding is not in place to provide a full service for it.

In the context of the CAP, the Deputy is right that our partners in the European Council of Young Farmers, CEJA, were instrumental in driving that narrative at Commission and European level for this proven service facilitating land transfer and land mobility in Ireland.

It was adopted into the Commission's proposals as an example of how a land mobility service can work across member states and the European Union. Through our CEJA context, we have had a number of engagements with our partners in other EU member states on how the service works and what it looks like on a practical basis on the ground. What we have not seen in the context of our own CAP strategic plan is a long-term sustainable funding element for the land mobility service. If we are building a service for three to five years, we need to build on what is there in terms of the financial contribution from the Department and we need to develop that on a wider geographical footprint such that we can offer a service across the country as opposed to what is being offered now, which is a footprint across different areas of the country. If somebody from an area not covered by the service calls on the service he or she is facilitated but there is not a focus in those areas. We need sustainable funding over a three to five-year period which, essentially, is over the course of the next CAP and ring-fenced funds for the development of a service like this so that we can ensure there is a geographical footprint, as well as a service that matches it. The feedback from Mr. Austin Finn, the lead person within the land mobility service with over 700 arrangements done at this stage, is that the service can develop both in terms of what we are doing now, that is, developing partnerships, land mobility transfers and share arrangements within farm and that there also is a need for a piece to complement the succession scheme we have proposed, in terms of the conversations that happen around kitchen tables countrywide with farmers, to provide an independent service for mediating that to ensure that both aspects are properly accounted for. That part of the service will be critical in terms of moving the succession piece forward and having more young farmers under the age of 35 actively farming. I will ask Mr. Dillon to contribute further on that as I know he is very involved with the intricacies of it.