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

I thank the Deputy for raising what is a critical issue for the future of farming and agriculture. Supporting generational renewal is one of our main priorities as Ministers. It is also one of the great challenges facing farming, not just in Ireland but across the EU.

Worldwide, the average age of farmers is higher than everyone would like it to be. For this reason, the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, 2023 to 2027, cites generational renewal as one of its nine key objectives, recognising the need for the agricultural sector to attract skilled and innovative young farmers to provide quality food and environmental public goods. Ireland needs generational renewal in our agricultural sector and through our CAP strategic plan, we are providing strong, tangible support for young farmers in the period up to 2027. Among the measures introduced are a complementary income support scheme assisting young farmers establishing farming businesses with a payment of more than €175 per ha, subject to a maximum of 50 ha over five years; a national reserve scheme providing payment entitlements to young farmers on land for which they hold no entitlements, and-or a top-up of existing entitlements to bring them in line with the national average value, subject to a maximum of 50 entitlements per applicant; a higher grant rate of 60% for qualified young farmers under the TAMS capital investment measure; a collaborative farming grant to promote and support partnerships with young, trained farmers; and a succession planning advice grant to assist farmers aged over 60 to seek succession planning advice.

In my area of farm safety and farmer mental health and well-being, I supported a fascinating European Innovation Partnership, EIP, in the west of Ireland, which supported 30 families through the whole succession process. The report on that EIP is very valuable. We can scale up that initiative and do it at a much higher level to break down those barriers and a lot of the fear farmers have around issues, such as tax and other implications. It is about recognising that by having a conversation in a structured, timely way, and by supporting farmers and farm families to have that conversation, we can take an awful lot of the stress and concern out of succession, which means many succession conversations do not happen at present.

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