Mr. Joseph McCrohan:

I believe Duhallow would be the same as Kerry. They stand on their own two feet to get their own funding and they do their own voluntary models, as the Senator would know. That is what IRD Duhallow would want to do always, and rightly so. It is very important that the local development companies all really engage in this. As well as getting money from the Department of agriculture for this project, we need to get money from other Departments as well. That is our job. We are speaking here today about agriculture and I am pleading with the committee not to let agriculture lose this project. The Department of agriculture needs to put more money into it to get more benefit for very small money. It bridges the urban-rural divide. Some of the participants may be coming from a rural setting out to an urban area. It is a really good story for farmers. They are not getting battered about spreading slurry on the wrong day of the year, having too many cows in one place, carbon credits or whatever. This is a real project that puts farmers at the centre of the rural community. I have come across nobody who can say that what these farmers are doing is the wrong thing. It has brought farmers back to a position in society where they should be, in the centre of rural communities doing the best for the rural communities.