Professor Tommy Boland:

I will take the questions piece by piece and I will defer to some of my colleagues on some of the questions.

On agricultural education to the wider community and those from a non-farming background, we engage with Agri Aware as part of its farm open days and farm walks and talks. We are located close to Dublin on our research farm so we bring in 600 to 700 secondary school students from schools that might not have access to farms otherwise. In some cases there would be country schools as well. It is a bit like the Senator's story of his cousins from Birmingham; there is amazement on the faces of students when they come in and see cows being milked, for example. We organise it that on the week of lambing I bring the students into the lambing shed. If a ewe is giving birth at the time I will ask the students to assist, which is met with great merriment and disgust by some of the students because they might not have any concept of the reproductive process. There is a limit in our reach as we can only take in 600 or 700 students. Teagasc would be involved in similar days with its farms.

We also work with transition year students through open weeks in the university. We bring them in to see some of the work that goes on in agricultural research and education. As generations get more removed from farming, there is a need for the sector as a whole to educate consumers. It is not a role that can fall to just Teagasc or UCD. There is a sector-wide requirement to link people back with where their food comes from, understand how food is produced and understand that the entire cost of food production is not just what the price appears as on the shelf in the supermarket. That does not represent all of the costs associated with that system.

That links in with the Senator's question on food waste. There are a number of programmes under way in the university. I am thinking in particular of the BiOrbic Bioeconomy Research Centre and part of the focus there is looking at the valorisation of food waste. There is a component around reducing food waste and then there is an effort to valorise those waste streams that are generated in food production, to use them for producing quality materials under the context of the circular economy so that there is no waste arising from the food system. I will pass over to my colleague, Professor Pierce, to address the Senator's question on the external advisory board.