Dr. Stan Lalor:

Professor O'Mara have summed it up well. What we are trying to achieve with the Signpost programme is to address what agriculture needs to do to move on the climate issue but it is only one part of the overall sustainability piece. It is a part of the environmental piece, which is part of the overall picture that includes the economic and social aspects as well. That is an objective of the entirety of our advisory service and our activities but we are conscious that to enable, accelerate and support farmers, we need additional support. Senator Lombard is correct that there are 21 advisers with a specific role around climate but there are additional staff who have gone into the advisory service who will help the overall effort in terms of climate. For example, we have six advisers who are specifically oriented towards organic systems, which is one of the actions in our climate action plan. There are also roles in specialist support and curriculum development support.

On foot of feedback from stakeholders, one of things we do not want is a relatively small cohort of Teagasc resources focused on climate, with nobody else fully engaged on it. We are working very hard to integrate this as much as possible into the overall service we provide. In terms of the additional resources we employed recently, we engaged people for a specific climate role who specialised in that area but we want to integrate that across all of our advisory services and in doing so, we will maximise our reach.

Regarding the thought process being the signpost advisory programme as originally formulated, we are on target to have 7,000 farmers on board between now and year's end. The target is 50,000 between now and 2030. It is a three-year participation programme. Even though 50,000 is the overall target, the ambition is for approximately 30,000 active participants at one time and for them to be self-sufficient after three years.