Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is dead right. Covid brought this home to us when the main social interactions farmers had were all taken away from them - the mart, the pub at the weekend for a pint, a local sports match or a religious service. They were all opportunities for farmers, who spend most of their week on their own in isolation. That compounds the pressures they might be facing. If a farmer is sitting in a tractor for 12 hours a day and listening to media commentary telling them they are to blame for all the challenges in the country, no wonder they will feel bad about themselves. At the same time, if they lose the social interaction piece the Deputy spoke about in the mart, which is so important for them being able to engage in, then they do not have the ability to release that the same way.

Through my Department I have funded eight European innovation partnership, EIP, projects. These are locally-led initiatives that look at peer-to-peer support and a range of different supports to develop and support the meitheal, where we all look out for each other. My Department is also funding the DCU-led FarMHealth research project, examining farmers' mental health literacy and help-seeking behaviour, which will inform the development of educational mental health interventions for farmers. A lot of this is about identifying where a farmer is under stress and reaching out. We also have the Farmers' Health and Wellbeing booklet, which went out to 122,000 farmers as part of the basic income support for sustainability, BISS, application process.

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