Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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It comes back to meitheal, which came through in this report. Fifty or 60 years ago, every town did not do the same things. Ballaghaderreen had its bacon factory. Different towns specialised in different industries and areas, and those skills were unique to those towns. Some of them are market towns and others are industrial towns and so forth. Building on what they are good at and their natural resources is the way to go. For example, tourism is paramount in Boyle. In Castlerea, it is food. SFI is engaging with communities. In the Dingle Peninsula, that approach was applied at a local level. SFI was ahead of the curve not just in terms of the hub but in respect of the innovation it is driving in agriculture. It is not just innovative from an Irish perspective but from a global perspective in the scale and type of work it is doing in respect of connected farms and so forth. Where does SFI see that mix of technology and farming going to meet the unique climate challenges we have in Ireland? I know SFI has been very involved in the whole area of nutrient management in Dingle. That is probably the single biggest issue here in Ireland. It is the single biggest challenge we have from a climate perspective and also from the perspective of sustainable agriculture and sustainable communities. Our guests might comment on that.

Ireland as a country is a net exporter of food because we do not have the numbers of people here to consume all the food we produce. Dingle, however, is unique in that it has the numbers of people to consume the local food and if there was ever a location that could develop a network from the farm to the fork to the restaurant table, and which could be a template for other parts of the country, it has to be that peninsula. Is there any work ongoing to develop a whole life cycle in that regard, including the retailers and restaurateurs, marketing it to tourists and consumers, and involving farm production that specifically produces products that will be consumed locally rather than being produced for processing?

On a related matter, I ask the witnesses to speak about the scaling deep concept, which is unique. From a policy perspective, how can the committee develop that concept across the portfolio of rural and community development initially as a template? It would be great to see it running across government. In that context, how do they envisage taking it from what is happening locally? This is an area on which the committee is about to carry out work. How can their experience feed into developing a national policy on this point? My apologies; I know I have asked very simple questions.