Mr. John Keane:

The land mobility service is a pilot scheme Macra na Feirme started in 2015. To date, about 60,000 acres have been facilitated and transferred through that service. It is a regional service because it is supported by private enterprise. FBD supports the programme to be rolled out in many of our co-operatives such as dairy co-operatives. There is a sum from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for the delivery of that service, which has been €50,000 annually and will be €100,000 this year, should it come through. The regionalised approach has a high effect in many areas where it is regionally based but we do not have it on a national scale. It is successful; it has been proven. It links older farmers with younger farmers and farmers who have no access to land, as Deputy Carthy mentioned earlier. That is one of our big things as well, that somebody who does not come from a farming background can start farming. We have that through the land mobility service. We had a request and submission into the CAP for long-term funding for the land mobility service. It was called out in the European Commission's document as a model that European countries could follow for facilitating land mobility. Our Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine chose not to include it in our CAP strategic plan. That was a glaring omission from our side of things in terms of supporting land mobility.

What needs to be done for that service to be nationally successful and to continue to work as effectively as it has is the provision of funding from the Department to grow it. We have a request in for the Department and the Minister to double that funding in the short term, to grow the funding over the next few years and beyond, and to create a link with Teagasc so that we can secure its future going forward and embed it.