Mr. John Hughes:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. It is a fact that the grey-haired brigade took over the rooms when we used to have face-to-face meetings. Diesel is just one element among a number of issues with TAMS, GLAS and so on that have finally come to a point and are now being recognised. They are piled up against the agricultural contractor, possibly because we did not make enough noises ourselves as an industry.

Hopefully, now we will get more recognition. That would be a help.

The carbon tax, on its own, for example, is a tax on food production. The farmer, as we mentioned earlier, can get the carbon tax rebate on that section of the fuel but we, as professionals, cannot. It is a shame that we cannot but, hopefully, we will rectify that in the near future.

I suppose you could say it is death by a thousand cuts. We are running into the nine hundreds at present. It is not too far off where we will get to the thousand and there will not be a continuation of this industry.

My business is celebrating its 74th year but there is no next generation coming on behind me to take over the business. They do not want it because there are alternatives that are cleaner, nicer and pay better. Why would you want to? We need to build an industry that people would want to get involved in.

We need a training structure for people to come into it in order that they can see that there is development going forward in the industry. That is why we welcome the initiative of Teagasc and the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to do with careers in apprenticeship. To be honest, it is a decade too late. I suppose better late than never. As for whether it will be too late, it possibly will. We need to get the speed up on that and deliver sooner rather than later. I am aware they are talking about putting in the training for tractor and machinery equipment later in the year but it, too, is another stumbling block because it is late. Everything is late. Late is no good. If you are late getting the cow to the bull, you will not have a crop. You are late getting the corn in, you will not have a crop. If you are late with the apprenticeship, there will not be any industry.