Dr. Aisling Murtagh:

One example is an organisation called SAFER - that is a French acronym. It is a government-backed organisation that buys land and facilitates those people. France has a strong food culture which lies behind all of that. The point I am trying to make is that there are fairly innovative examples which could be trialled in an Irish context to plug some of those gaps. We potentially have an untapped female successor group, but we also have a potential group of urban dwellers who want to come to the countryside to provide that renewal.

Another example that comes to mind is the farm incubator. It is like the idea of a business incubator but is actually a test farm which may target female successors, young farmers or new entrants where they are given one or two years to test an idea and develop a farm idea as someone would with any other business. There are innovative ideas out there in the European context that could potentially work in Ireland and could change the face of rural areas.