Professor Frank Monahan:

There is a plan to develop UCD Lyons Farm. The Senator visited and he can see that many of the facilities date back to the 1960s so there is a real requirement to upgrade. What we are doing at the moment is we have secured some funding from UCD to come in behind the development of the farm and we are seeking funding externally as well. We are working with the UCD Foundation to try to secure some external funding to support the project. A number of parts of the development of UCD Lyons Farm have been occurring in a piecemeal fashion. Two weeks ago we opened a new innovation hub on the farm, which is fantastic and which will enable industry and entrepreneurs to make use of the farm facilities in developing new and innovative products. The next phase of it is to extend that to a knowledge centre. We reckon the cost of that to be about €12 million. UCD is committing some of that and we are seeking the balance of it. Any support we can get for that at a Government level would be appreciated. I would be happy to answer more on that if anybody has any questions.

I will come back to the Senator's question on the need for flexible, short and small courses for farmers and others interested in upskilling. That is something we are conscious of. Many farmers will not be able to commit to doing a certificate, diploma or masters and that is one of the reasons we launched what we are calling micro credentials. They are small, bite-sized courses and our hope is that people who want to obtain continuous professional development or get upskilled in some area will enrol in these courses and get a qualification. That could subsequently build up to something bigger but that is something we are working on. We have launched about 13 of those just this year. We have also launched a number of online programmes, including an online masters in animal science. It is a certificate through to diploma to masters. We are seeing that many of our former graduates are coming back to upskill and get the most recent knowledge. I will leave it there but I am happy to answer more questions.