Written answers

Tuesday, 16 January 2018

Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Teagasc Funding

Photo of Martin KennyMartin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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1139. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the funding provided to Teagasc for the purpose of training farmers in each of the years 2008 to 2017. [54475/17]

Photo of Michael CreedMichael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Teagasc has statutory responsibility for the provision of training, research and advisory services to the agri-food sector. Programmes and activities are developed in conjunction with clients and partners overseen by an Authority that is representative of the main stakeholder groups in the sector.

Teagasc training of farmers encompasses a wide variety of activities in terms of formal education courses, on-farm training and the provision of advice through its advisory services. It engages with 60,000 farmers annually, of which approximately 40,000 are contracted clients.

My Department provides Teagasc with a yearly block Grant in Aid subvention to support the delivery of its training, research and advisory services. The distribution of funding between services is an operational matter for Teagasc to determine.

The following table details Grant in Aid allocations from 2008 to 2017.

YearFunding provided
2008€139.964m
2009€131.927m
2010€126.165m
2011€132.156m
2012€128.460m
2013€121.838m
2014€119.210m
2015€121.639m
2016€126.780m
2017€128.130m

Teagasc also earn own generated operational income from competitive research programmes, client fees for the provision of research, advisory and training services, EU research funding, farm operations etc.

Its overall operating budget for 2018 is an estimated €203m. Typically, some 40% of the yearly budget is devoted to research with the remainder split half and half between advisory and training services.

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