Dr. Aisling Murtagh:

I will add a couple more points to expand on what Dr. Farrell and Mrs. Weir already outlined. The key picture and message to take away is that women in agriculture are diversifying farms. In our work for the FLIARA project, we have done some analysis of existing policy. We particularly looked at the CAP strategic plan and the analysis of needs in Ireland. One key thing that jumps out is the lack of interest from the general farming community in farm diversification and the need for education and measures around that. If you look at women and the successful examples of women who are running farm-based enterprises, they are the ones who are diversifying and who have the skills to run farms and rural businesses. The successful people who are there are amazing trailblazers but there is an untapped resource within the younger, emerging farming community and people who have left rural areas.

This issue of attracting women into farming to a greater extent, as Dr. Farrell has pointed to, is a sustainability issue along with the issues of rural depopulation and rural jobs. It is about attracting these people back who maybe have experience in other areas but whose heart and soul is in a farm. There is so much potential. Can women access the measures that are there at the moment or are the criteria too strict? There is a whole body of work to make sure the existing measures in place are designed in a way that allow women to tap into them to the best of their potential.