Ms Elaine Houlihan:

I thank Senator Daly. We are positive about the grant but we are here to pick out the flaws as well, as well as to relay the concerns our membership have with it. On buy-in for the grant, it goes back to awareness once again. We are doing what we can by sending this out to our members.

It is great sending us out to the young farmers but if the house is not in their name, it is hard to get the older generation to buy into this grant as well. That is one thing. I firmly agree that it needs to be built into succession.

Most farmhouses are in the middle of the farm. It is just what happened back in the day. We own one and it is bang in the middle of a farm. I rented it out a couple of years ago and the lady moved out because she could not leave the front door open because the neighbour’s cows were passing by and she had a visit to her window.

Deputy Nolan touched on the help to buy scheme. This is the buzzword for the younger generation. Every single young person is talking about the help to buy scheme. Now, we need them to talk about this grant that is available. We want a future in rural Ireland and I think members saw that from what we have done. We need the buy-in here. The concerns raised by every farming organisation here need to be taken on board to get the buy-in to this. We are happy to renovate houses at our age. I would prefer to renovate a house than build a house. It would be an easier option. As we say, it is to do with the labour shortage.

The rural planning guidelines were mentioned. How can we as young people have faith in the Government when the delivery of these guidelines is taking months?