Mr. John Keane:

I thank the Deputy for the question as to whether they should be mandatory. Our firm belief is that they should be mandatory. If we were sitting in the committee that was dealing with the future of the health sector and somebody came in to present and say that 5% of our nurses on the floors attending accident and emergency departments were under the age of 35 and 30% of them were over the age of 65, I am fairly confident that we would be calling that a crisis and saying that everything needs to be done to encourage as many people and as many nurses as possible to take up the jobs to bring the sector into line with the other relatable sectors. If one looks at the average working population across the sectors, including teachers, doctors and nurses, between 25% and 30% of the average working population is under 35. We are at 5% and the numbers have decreased in the past decade. Why would it not make sense to make that mandatory, if one will be relying on these people to produce food to feed the world in the future? We will need a farmer in the morning and the evening, and at lunchtime, no matter what happens. It should be mandatory.

In terms of engagement, we have had loads of engagement on what should be done for the sector going forward from an environmental point of view. I have sat on forums nearly every day of the week in this role in the past two years, and my predecessor did similarly. In terms of action and delivering on what we are suggesting needs to be implemented to drive this change, we just do not see it.

I mentioned the CAP supports earlier. It is the same level of investment that we had from the previous CAP. We are the only member state that has not used installation aid or business start-up, whatever one wants to call it, as a measure to support young people to access farming and we achieved the minimum allocation for young farmer supports under Pillar I. When one translates that to an Irish context, we have the tax reliefs, obviously, for the leasing of land and stock relief which are very welcome, but we now find ourselves in a situation where the state aid rules are becoming a limiting factor. The state aid rules state that one can claim up to a maximum of €70,000 over a lifetime under those tax reliefs, which are agricultural tax reliefs such as consolidation relief, stock relief measures and young farmer relief measures. We are finding now with the way the value of land is going, the prices of stock, etc., that our farmers are likely to reach that threshold and surpass it as time goes on. That limit is something which needs to be looked at as well.

From a Government point of view here in Ireland, there are schemes in other EU member states where they are investing specific supports targeted at young farmers around business start-up grant-aid support, such as we would have in business start-up outside of farming. They are investing in technological development around environmental and strategic actions as well. We do not see that investment here. We see that the access to finance is the single biggest barrier. There was mention of creating an attractive lifestyle. Many of the farms that young people take over have had a certain level of investment over the past 30 years and if one puts oneself in that young person's shoes, one does not want to be out at 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. when one's peers have had their feet up since 5 p.m. People need some capital investment to make life easier and to be able to invest in technology so that they are not drudging at 11 p.m. or midnight. and their lifestyle is a bit easier. Then it becomes more attractive for them to stay in farming.