Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and acknowledge his contribution, particularly on the issue of areas of natural conservation, ANC, which has been in focus for a very long time. I acknowledge the Minister's clarification.

Let me raise an issue the Minister did not mention - where we are going with young farmers. We heard an interesting presentation on young farmers this morning by the EU audit committee. It is a problem Europe-wide. The issue is trying to regenerate and re-energise the agriculture industry. One of the statistics given is that Europe-wide we are losing about a 1,000 farmers a day, which is an absolutely frightening figure. I know that it is Europe-wide scale, but it still shows the level of decline. It could be argued that the two biggest issues in farming today are that of trying to get young people into farming and the sustainability of farming, about which the Minister has spoken at length, but I do think that is going to be our biggest challenge. I refer to trying to encourage young people to come into the system. I was interested to hear the views of the European auditor on the actual amount money being pumped into it. We have put money into the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, and the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS. We have increased the level of funding from 40% to 60%. We have also increased the single farm payment by 25%. However, has the actual number of farmers under 35 years in the system increased?The major issue for the next CAP talks will be to ensure there will be a future for agriculture in the years 2020 to 2050. How will we deal with the issues that arise? If we are to look at creating a future for agriculture, we need to consider how to get the older farmer off the pitch. Previously we had an early retirement scheme for farmers, which worked to a degree. It gave farmers an opportunity to take a pension from the age of 55 years and hand the land over to the younger farmers. A report dating from a few years ago stated more farmers aged over 80 years were farming than farmers aged under 35 years. That statistic shows the issue with the age profile of farmers. Are the next CAP talks the time to consider reintroducing a scheme to help farmers retire early and move off the land and hand the reins to the younger generation? At present we have used the scheme of enhancing single farm and GLAS payments for young farmers, but has it been successful? Do we need to evolve and put the focus on ensuring that land is transferred from farmers aged 60 years to younger trained farmers who now have between two and four years education in agricultural science behind them and are super at what they do. We have left the days of doing a 60 day course in Teagasc course and getting a Green Certificate. These are exceptionally well trained farmers. The only issue we have is how we ensure they can get their hands on the land at a younger age so that they can create the benefit we need for industry.

I appeal to the Minister to consider those issues. The key issue, bar the question of sustainability, is to ensure that young farmers have land and we have to come up with ways to deal with this.