Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 8 November 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Education and Upskilling in the Agriculture Sector
Dr. Stan Lalor:
We would have north of 2,000 if we include part-time, distance and full-time students across all the streams. We are probably not far off that level. The members have seen the fluctuations over the past year. We were way behind that ten to 15 years ago. We saw a spike post 2015, when a lot of the new schemes that were introduced with the CAP cycle in 2015 probably put an emphasis on training that was never there before. Certainly, there was a lot of catching-up to be done for farmers who had perhaps let agricultural training slip. At the moment, we are in a much more stable position.