We are now in public session. No apologies have been received. I will go through the privilege notice. Witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to the committee. This means a witness has a full defence in any defamation action for anything said at a committee meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and may be directed to cease giving evidence on an issue at the Chair's discretion. Witnesses should follow the direction of the Chair in this regard. They are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that, as is reasonable, no adverse commentary should be made against an identifiable third person or entity.

Witnesses who are to give evidence from a location outside of the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on the matter. Privilege against defamation does not apply to the publication by witnesses outside the proceedings held by the committee of any materials arising from the proceedings.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Parliamentary privilege is considered to apply to the utterances of members participating online in a committee meeting when their participation is from within the parliamentary precincts. Members may not participate online in a public meeting from outside the parliamentary precincts and any attempt to do so will result in members having their online access removed.

De réir an chláir oibre, táimid inniu chun díriú isteach ar fheirmeoireacht caora agus go háirithe ar dhaoine óga. Our first session today is engagement with the Young Sheep Farmer Forum and the committee will hear from Mr. Michael Feely, cathaoirleach; Ms Aoife Mahony, Mr. Darren McGuire, and Ms Nicola Kennedy. Tá fáilte rompu. They are very welcome. The opening statement was circulated earlier and members have had the opportunity to read through it. I will allow Mr. Feely five minutes to read the statement and we will then go to questions and answers.

I thank the witnesses for being able to make it in today and for addressing the committee. Earlier this week we were scanning at home, and we were speaking about the witnesses who were going to be coming before the committee. The idea of younger people going into sheep farming really struck a chord with the lads at home. A swathe of issues will be common ground between somebody starting in sheep farming, beef or any farming enterprise but I am especially interested to hear the particular issues the witnesses have come across in sheep farming. The witnesses will have an opportunity to air and discuss them with committee members.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the committee for the invitation to appear today. I am chair of the Young Sheep Farmer Forum. We are custodians of a tradition that has shaped and cared for rural Ireland for generations. We do it because we love working with animals and we take pride in producing high-quality food. Farming is more than a job; it is a way of life, and with it comes a responsibility to maintain the land for future generations. This passion and stewardship are why we are here today, to ensure sheep farming remains viable for us as that next generation.

Farming is at a crisis point, with less than 6% of farm holders under 35. Barriers to entry mean many young people who want to farm are forced to find work away from home as it is simply not viable for us to make a living at home. Our forum, supported by Kepak, Mountbellew Agricultural College and Bord Bia, was created in response to the major industry issues of declining flock numbers, a lack of generational renewal and rising environmental and market challenges.

Over the past nine months, we have explored the full supply chain, from different farming systems and sustainability actions to factory processes and consumer demands. Based on this research, we have developed practical and achievable recommendations that are grounded in our real experience and would benefit the entire industry. Today we want to be seen to represent the next generation while still respecting those before us who have paved the way. We acknowledge the support of the Minister, Deputy Heydon, who launched the programme in April and welcomed our recommendations in November. The recommendations in our policy report focus on three key areas: generational renewal and land mobility, income and investment support, and breaking barriers for entry. Some of our proposals require funding, but the main aim is to support productivity, efficiency, and sustainability.

Access to land is the single biggest barrier facing young farmers. Only 8% of farms have a formal succession plan, and many older farmers delay farm transfers due to financial concerns and a fear of not being able to continue working at something they love to do. We propose a seven-year farm retirement scheme encompassing phased transfers and pension support, tax relief for renting land within families to create a low-risk road test for succession, and a statutory land mobility body to provide legal, tax and advisory support. These recommendations are practical, achievable, and essential for breaking the barriers in land mobility. Some of these measures were also highlighted in the report of the Department's commission on generational renewal.

We call for stable support in the scheme, with a five-year commitment and a payment increase to €20 per head. Similarly, the lack of flexibility with the reference number for the sheep improvement scheme is a clear oversight. We call for flexibility by allowing a reduction to 75% of the reference number to account for ewe culling at the end of the year. These measures will help bridge the gap between policy and reality.

Our final ask relates to breaking barriers to entry. Young farmers face practical obstacles preventing them from entering or staying in farming. We propose a nationally consistent rural planning system so young farmers can build a home on the family farm. Restrictive rural planning contributes to rural decline and poses real animal welfare challenges. It is essential farmers are on-site during the busy lambing season. We call for more robust farmer panels to make scheme design practical and inclusive, and education about grants and scheme supports to be embedded in green cert courses. We also acknowledge recent improvements to the agfood portal as a first step toward better access and usability. Our ultimate ask is that the committee help remove some of the barriers that exist to make it easier for us to get into farming as a business.

Our policy recommendations extend beyond the interests of young farmers. They are essential to the long-term sustainability of the Irish sheep sector. Ewe numbers have dropped by almost 12% in the past five years and the national sheep kill processed in the country has fallen by 30% in the past three years. Our determination and passion mean nothing without the support of policy. We urge the committee to support our asks today. We ask it to prioritise access to land, income and investment support, and breaking barriers for entry in the upcoming CAP negotiations and domestic budgets. We ask to include these in its programme of work for 2026 and establish a working group with young farmer representation. The forum has exciting plans to continue our advocacy next year and the committee's support is crucial in this regard. Together, we can secure the future of sheep farming and rural Ireland.

I welcome the members of the Young Sheep Farmer Forum. I am impressed by their work, energy and professionalism. It is great to see young farmers here at the heart of our committee. We are fiercely committed to farming. We have had Macra na Feirme before the committee. We have heard a great deal about the land mobility issue, so I will not go through that. I will give my time to the witnesses and ask them to focus on what they think about some of the issues.

Mountbellew is a particularly good college. I know it well and know many of the staff there. I am in it a lot. It is exciting, important and good to see the partnership between the college and young farmers. I will make some one-line statements and then hand over to the witnesses, because I want them to use most of this time.

The intra-family land rental tax relief is particularly important. Will the witnesses tease out one or two examples where they would like to see that change? Macra na Feirme dealt with statutory land mobility.

Rural planning is clearly a big issue. We know that since 2005, there have been no rural planning guidelines. Despite all of the promises by successive governments, we have no planning, so there is clearly an issue. Every day of the week, cases involving young people who wish to stay on the family farm or in close proximity to their elderly parents come across my desk. That ties in with the repopulation of rural communities, concerns the GAA has, parish life and community life. There are towns and villages dying on their feet because young people cannot live in them or are not permitted to do so because of restrictive planning laws. I am not saying there should be willy-nilly planning. There should be proper, sustainable planning. However, we have an issue, and I would like to hear about it.

I note the support for the private agricultural college funding review. I had never thought about that before. While I will not ask the witnesses to go into that, it is an important new dimension they are bringing to the table.

Mr. Feely spoke about flexibility in the sheep improvement scheme. Will he explain what he means by greater flexibility in the scheme? I also think the price bonus for young farmers is a particularly good idea. It is innovative and important. We have to take sectors out that need extra support. Young farmers is one of them. That bonus scheme is great and I commend it.

I also commend the witnesses. I see a freshness in their approach. They are promoting it themselves, which is important, but there is also the professional way they have set out what matters to them, what needs to be proposed and what the benefits and objectives of that are. That is key to delivery and the professional documentation the forum sent to the committee. They can be sure that will become part of our work programme. We can pick out elements to progress faster than others.

I will address the issue of tax relief. All four of us here see our future as being part-time farmers. That is the unfortunate reality. We need outside income to afford us financial sustainability. On the relief, if I were to offer the father of my colleague, Mr. McGuire, a lease agreement, he would get that money tax free when there is no intra-family relationship. If Mr. McGuire approached his father to say he would like to take a lease from him over a five- or seven-year period, that money would become a tax expense for his father. We are looking for fairness and transparency. We want to keep young people in farming. That is one step we can take. It is a road test for succession in that regard. It allows us, as the next generation, to take a portion of land from the home farm and try to make it a workable asset. It also allows the older generation to see how we would perform and maybe reinforce the idea in their head that it might be time to step back, and that the next generation is capable.

The Senator touched on planning, which is a big issue. I live in County Roscommon, Mr. McGuire is in County Mayo, Ms Mahony is in County Galway and Ms Kennedy is in County Kildare. Planning is an issue all over the country. There are a lot of young people going abroad and moving away from home. We were out with two farmers, Brendan Joyce and Martin Joe Kerrigan. They live near Mr. McGuire, so I ask him to explain their story and the experience they have had with planning.

Rural Ireland is the heartbeat of Ireland. It is where tradition is in Ireland. I come from Aughagower, a rural village outside Westport. I like to say I am from a rural area. With Kepak, we did certain site visits over nine months. Two of them were to Glentraigue outside Clonbur in Connemara. We had a great day out there. You would not want to be anywhere else in the country. We asked what the biggest problem was and the farmer told is that the crèche was closed and the school was struggling. Money was even being offered for people to take students in. The worst thing was that no one can get planning in the valley. It did not make sense.

We went further on to Oorid, between Recess and Clifden, which is pure countryside. You are not hitting any big town or city. It was the same thing. It was out in the countryside. The number one problem in the area was planning. There is a local mart nearby in Maam Cross. That is a social aspect for older and, hopefully, for younger farmers going forward. If there is no mart there, with the social side to that, and, to link that on, if there are no co-ops for meal, there will be no work in the factories for people. The local shops and post office all link in together. It all comes from the countryside. If there is no one there farming, that will have an impact on the economy all over Ireland, not just out in Connemara, Ballintra, Donegal or south Kerry. It will link in all over the country.

We are proposing realistic planning for a young farmer, such that within eight weeks there will be a site visit and they are not waiting between six and eight months for someone to come out, pushing it out again and again. It needs to be realistic. Young farmers or their parents who have submitted an application under the basic income support for sustainability, BISS, scheme or a made similar application in the previous ten years should be entitled to build a house. We are not saying a mansion, but a general house for living. It also comes back to animal welfare. You cannot be calving the cow or lambing the ewes if you are half an hour away. They will not wait. The lamb will be dead on the ground. It all comes back to the realistic side. That is what we are proposing.

At the time of the foot and mouth disease outbreak, sheep had to be destroyed, particularly on the hill farms. We lost all that knowledge.

The sheep lost their knowledge of the hill and it took the farmers a long time to train those sheep back in. If we lose the farmers in the west of Ireland, we will lose that body of knowledge.

Regarding insistence on the reference number, in recent years farmers have been let down by scheme requirements and specifications. It is definitely something that needs to be looked at and we should get more farmer involvement in it. I will hand over to Ms Mahony to speak about schemes and reference number flexibility.

I need to bring in Deputy Kenny but we will have an opportunity to flesh out the various points later.

I thank the witnesses for their opening statement. I am aware of the issues they have raised. We met some time ago and I am conscious that many of the issues being spoken about from a sheep perspective are common to other sectors of farming. The issues with schemes are there for all farmers to deal with regarding the difficulties and hurdles put in front of them. It always strikes me is that if things are made difficult and onerous for people starting farming, it will be very difficult to get people to take the plunge and take that step forward.

It has been said that one of the biggest barriers is the availability of land. Transfer and succession are issues. We also need to see the opportunity for younger farmers to be able to buy land and get access to it. I would like the views of the witnesses on what can be done to make this easier. Many years ago, I do not know how long ago it is now, we had the Agricultural Credit Corporation and there was also the Industrial Credit Corporation for industry. Both were set up because the banks would not lend. Bit by bit, they wore away and were taken over, and now they are gone. Is there a need at this point to look at a system to be put in place to ensure that young farmers in particular can get access to capital to be able to invest in buying land and equipping their farms for the future?

The issue of planning permission was mentioned by Senator Boyhan. This is a really big issue in many parts of the country. In my area in Leitrim it is a huge problem. The particular aspect there is the quality of the land and it is similar in Connemara. There are very shallow soils so there is not the percolation demanded by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. This totally ignores the reality of modern technology. The modern sewerage treatment plant for a single house treats the effluent ten times better than the one in the town but it is not allowed to be used if the soil is not to a certain standard. This is causing problems in many areas where young people want to build houses.

Most young people want to live in the community they grew up in and they want to send their future children to the school they went to. This is innate to us. The issues with this are not only about barriers to planning in certain areas where there may be a lot of houses or holiday homes built. There are also issues where there is rural decline and rural depopulation and yet we have these barriers to planning. These issues are very valid. I would like to get the views of the witnesses, particularly on access to land as one of the key problems. I would also like their views on what incentives can be put in place to get a better price. I acknowledge the bonus mentioned in the documents but what can be done to ensure there is a future for the lamb sector?

In terms of buying land and land mobility, we have proposed that the Government come forward and buy farms in excess of 20 ha. It could then operate a rent to buy scheme, something similar to a mortgage. The Government could buy this land and sell it back to young farmers. The big thing with buying anything is to know that in five, ten or 15 years we will still have an industry to work towards. The Government needs to push hard for these schemes. The sheep improvement scheme gives us five years and a clear plan to rely on. National schemes, such as the sheep welfare scheme, do not have the same security. At present CAP would not give young farmers a lot of confidence to take a chance on a farm. There are potential cuts of up to 20% and a figure of €10.7 million potentially coming down to €8.1 million. We firmly reject this 20% cut. Talk of this shortfall being made up by alternative temporary sources of funding will not cut it. CAP is essential for income security, stability in the sector and giving us the confidence to take the risk.

To come in on CAP, we have made recommendations and what we expect for young farmers is that something in the new CAP will replace the national reserve we have at present. There is talk about entitlements coming or going but there should be something for young farmers so that they will still be looked after in this sense. It has not been mentioned but it is a given that we would expect this in the new CAP for young farmers.

With regard to price, one of the recommendations is to push protected geographical indication, PGI, status for Irish lamb. It is about safeguarding the quality assurance. We have seen the hormones in beef coming from Brazil. PGI is about ensuring our image is protected. When we think of Irish grassland, and sheep farmers in particular, we are looking at a low input and low output system but it is a very high-quality product and the market reflects this with the prices we receive at the minute.

On the sustainability side, the environment is very important. What other animal could we put on hills or anywhere else and then bring them down and have a project to sell? There is also the fact that the hills then do not go wild. It is not just hills but land in general. It is just like a house. If we leave a house for a few years, it does not take long before the trees close it in.

Is much Irish lamb being exported?

We were lucky that we got out to Rungis market. England, France and Germany are the three main markets. Visiting Rungis was an excellent experience to see the international reach of Irish lamb. We met Francis Fauchère, a butcher who deals with 1,000 lambs a day and 30% of them are Irish lambs. It was fascinating to see that the product can be in the field next door one day and out in France two days later. He keeps coming back for Irish lamb because he knows its traceability and the sustainability metrics of the lamb, and his consumers are interested in it. He looks for a carcase of approximately 20 kg and the colour of the meat. Irish lamb is able to tick these boxes for him.

With regard to the prospects for the future of agriculture, which is why the witnesses are here, do they see a future without change happening and without certain measures being put in place? My experience of speaking to a lot of young people is that they do not see a future in farming unless there will be a substantial off-farm income in addition to it. Do the witnesses see the potential for full-time farmers in the sheep sector to make a living?

We see ourselves as part-time farmers but implementation of our list of recommendations would increase the appeal of the sector and afford better opportunities through improved land mobility services. The farm retirement scheme really is needed for access to land. There are great supports at present through the national reserve and the young farmer top-up, but it is about getting the land moving and getting the younger generation into farming. If we can work with the committee, we will push hard to see some of these recommendations included.

We will now move onto the next speaker who is Deputy Aird.

I welcome the witnesses and I am delighted-----

Apologies have been received from Senator Daly who is not able to be with us today. I call Deputy Aird.

As the Cathaoirleach has taken a minute of my time, he might give me an extra minute. The witnesses are welcome. I get a great lift when I see the four young farmers here. They have spoken about part-time farming. If they could make a full-time living out of sheep, would they all be full-time farmers? The four of them are nodding. This tells us the commitment that is out there and the witnesses are not the only people. We also have the beef sector and every other sector. The meat sector is volatile and prices are dropping drastically. I am delighted the witnesses are taking an interest in sheep. This country was very famous for the quality of its sheep down through the years. So many people have got out of sheep farming. We come back to the drum that I beat the whole time. Young farmers account for only 4.1% of farmers and the figure is dropping drastically. The biggest problem they have is with land lease.

The Government must get serious and encourage the owners of land to pass it to other people or to use land leasing or whatever other scheme the Government wants. We must make the scheme viable for people and encourage them to use it. If we do not, and if the witnesses do not get land to farm, they cannot farm and will have to walk away. We would lose four more people. The Government has to start banging heads together and get a scheme that is acceptable to everybody.

I understand where farmers are coming from. I have been dealing with farmers all my life. I dealt with my father, Lord rest him. The last thing you would do would be to ask if he was going to sign the place over to you. At that time, there was a whole group of farmers who are now gone. We must be serious. We must put in place a proper scheme to allow a farmer who reaches 50, 55 or 60 years of age and whose son or daughter is prepared to lease the farm - and perhaps the farmer would need convincing as to how good the son or daughter is and what job they might do - to lease it. The farmer might then be encouraged in four or five years' time, when he or she reaches pension age, to feel happy about the situation and how the farm is being run. He or she could then sign the farm over. There is a huge fear among people. I have been brought in as a mediator in several households where rows have started over the signing over of the farm or whatever. Let us make it easy. I plead with the Government to make it easy.

I understand there was a scheme for forgotten farmers that was not taken up completely. There was approximately €2.5 million or €3 million left over. I asked the Minister to consider putting that money into the witnesses' fund at the time because it was oversubscribed. I was told that was not going to happen.

I know very well a young person who loves sheep and who is involved in the industry. He has a dipping lorry. The lorry will go to all the farms down the whole way to Clifden. Distance is no object. That is an off-farm income for him. That is a bit of encouragement here today.

I know the witnesses are studying the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, and the national schemes. Are they accessible enough to make a difference for the witnesses?

There are good supports. Two of the recommendations relate to schemes. I will pass over to my colleague Ms Mahony to discuss that point.

The sheep improvement scheme came from the previous CAP. One of the recommendations we focused on was about flexibility in reference numbers. That would be a simple tweak that would help with farm management practices. We are looking at a reduction of the reference number to 75% for a portion of approximately 25% of the year. That would allow farmers to cull ewes at the back end of the year when they are tight on grass. Currently, they have to hold on to those ewes over the winter, which eats into their grass for the spring and the lambs coming onboard.

We looked at the sheep welfare scheme. It was incredibly disappointing that the promised increase was taken from us. We took a cut to €11.50 per head. We need a commitment to pay. We do not need cuts after the farmers have completed the tasks for the scheme.

We know that farmers rely heavily on these schemes. We need commitment that these schemes are going to last. In 2024, 40% of farms were not deemed viable.

Right.

We need that money. Those schemes will be the backbone for a lot of the farms in Ireland going forward. If we do not have money coming in, we will see ewe numbers decreasing more and more in the years to come.

Will Ms Kennedy please give me her take?

A lot of the young or younger farmers coming in are seeing farming more as a business. The Deputy asked if we would be full-time or part-time farmers. I would argue that there are very few part-time farmers. There are full-time farmers who have full-time jobs as well. The term "part-time farmers" makes it sound as if they are working 15 hours per week.

That is a good answer.

For most part-time farmers, their part-time farming takes up more time than a full-time paid job. That is the unfortunate reality. The four of us are examples of people who have gone away and got an education. We have the technical background in farming. We have got a lot of practical experience from older farmers and neighbours. We have gone out and got that experience. To take that forward into the future, we need stability. Very few other businesses would be able to function with the lack of clarity we have. We are told we are going to get something and then do not get it. We are told we might or might not get something. This does not apply to many sheep farmers, but there are a few sheep farmers in derogation. That is a massive issue and it took until six weeks before the end of the current derogation to find out if we were getting it again.

I will say one thing about planning permission. I was a councillor for many years. I abhor it when I hear that people in rural areas cannot get planning permission. In Laois County Council, we always had the concept that farmers' sons and daughters would always get it, especially if they were farming at home. The biggest arguments I used to have were over situations where the council did not want to grant permission because the farmer had the herd number. I used to say that the farmer was not going to be looking for planning permission because he or she already had a house. It was about whoever else was applying. The council then wanted a named person. We got around that.

Everyone talks about animal rights. There will be a debate on the issue in the Dáil this evening. You cannot farm away from your farmyard. If you have cows, sucklers, ewes or whatever, you cannot do it because it is impossible. I can tell the witnesses that from my heart. I was out at 2.50 a.m. calving a cow. It does not work. Imagine having to get into your car and drive five or six miles in the fog, snow and rain. I have always said that from an animal welfare point of view, you cannot do that. Deputy Newsome Drennan would know that from the point of view of horses. I will come in again.

I thank the witnesses for attending. They are four fabulous young people. I compliment them on the fantastic work they are trying to do to achieve their goals. Fair play to them. They are the future of their counties and of our country.

I am delighted the witnesses mentioned the housing crisis. I know this meeting is more about sheep farming, but the witnesses mentioned the housing crisis and getting planning permission in rural Ireland. I am well aware of those issues. I am from the west coast of Clare. I am Deputy Joe Cooney. I am well aware of the planning restrictions and of what is happening. Unfortunately, the big issue is that our towns and villages lack infrastructure. Unfortunately, no new housing developments are going up. That is a serious setback. When you do not have new housing developments going up in rural villages and towns, it is a massive setback. Naturally enough, people then move away from those areas because there is nothing to hold them there.

In my village of O'Callaghan's Mills in east Clare, we had shops, pubs and post offices. They have all closed down bar one pub. By the looks of things, the latter may close in 2026. It is because of the housing crisis and the lack of infrastructure. In fairness to the Government, massive investment will be going into infrastructure from now on. I hope that will solve those issues going forward.

On one-off rural houses, it was mentioned earlier that the nature of the ground is the big setback. That is disappointing, especially for the sons and daughters of landowners who want to live in their own houses. They would have got planning permission in the past but the guidelines, environmental issues and the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, have changed things completely. It is now, unfortunately, more difficult. Those issues must be dealt with, going forward, to try to keep people on their farms and in their own areas in order to support communities, GAA clubs and whatever else.

Mr. Feely's opening presentation was brilliant. I know it was put together by the four witnesses. Fair play to them. Their submission to the committee states:

Farmers have been let down by poorly designed schemes with harsh restrictions. Confidence has been further weakened by budget cuts and payment reductions.

We know what has happened in the past. Perhaps the witnesses would outline what they feel needs to happen in the future to try to help sheep-farming into the future. I would like all four of them to come in to give their views.

I will start. As a sheep farmer, I know the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, is a very suitable scheme. It is suitable for the enterprises we are running. There was a cap at 50,000 on the number of people who could get into the scheme, but roughly 55,000 were allowed in. Any new farmer who started last year or who starts this year or next year has no access to such a scheme. We will be looking for increased budget allowances to allow those farmers to get into schemes. I will pass to Ms Mahony, who will go through the situation in terms of sheep.

I mentioned a few minutes ago the two sheep schemes we currently have. We will be looking for flexibility in the reference number for the sheep improvement scheme to allow for the culling of ewes at the back end of the year.

We recognise that there is a gap for an independent farmer panel in the area of scheme design that would take into account younger and older farmers and full-time and part-time farmers from different regions of the country who could sit down and talk about, examine and road test schemes before they are launched to the rest of the country. We believe that little tweaks in respect of the reference number, for example, could have been easily avoided if we had been able to sit in a group like ours to go through these schemes and point out things that are not suitable in terms of farm management practices. On the welfare scheme, we had obviously expected to see a much greater payment than we did. Again, we are looking for a commitment that payment will be made in the following year.

As Ms Mahony said about the farmer panels, most schemes are probably 99.9% developed before farmers get involved, especially those operating on the ground. It would be realistic to bring young farmers into it in that sense and to have an independent panel that is not linked with other farming bodies. In other words, that would involve actual full-time farmers and the likes of us young farmers. On schemes, the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS, grant and all of that, it is about dealing with the delays involved. If I go for a headstock for my cattle crush, it is an animal welfare issue. Again, this is a fixed unit and it takes up to six months to get approval for it. Having to wait six months does not make a lot of sense. We could not be saying that we were catching the cow or anything like that. Along with that, we are saying that the TAMS grant should be speeded up in order that people do not have to wait six months. We were told that hands are tied in regard to money. We put forward a proposal where if a young farmer is putting up a shed, staged payments should be reintroduced. In that context, if the farmer has a slatted tank in place, he or she would get one third of the payment. If he or she gets the roof on the shed, then he or she would maybe get the second part of the payment. Everyone will not agree with that, but it is something that would help with cash flow for young farmers and with interest payments and everything else to do with loans.

Very good. What is Ms Kennedy's view?

There is a great base to the schemes. They have certainly improved in the past few years. Even four years ago, I think the only scheme dedicated to sheep farmers was one where they were paid €8 per head. We have seen improvements. As already stated, it is just that ability to plan and the consistency and commitment. We committed to following the actions laid out in the scheme. By the time we had been told that the scheme was to be reduced, however, everyone had implemented those actions. They had taken on the costs. A lot of people would have changed their management, for example, people bringing in sheep and extra time off the hills and things like that. The commitment being reversed was not great for us.

We will be pushing for an increase from €13 up to €20. There are 1.9 million ewes in the country, so we are talking an additional €13 million for that scheme. We feel, based on the costs incurred and income forgone as a result of the actions taken, that this is where the figure needs to be.

Mr. Feely mentioned that he met the Minister, Deputy Heydon. In fairness to him, the Minister is doing fantastic work, and he is willing to work with young voters and with farmers and everyone in general. Mr. Feely referred to ACRES being idle. What are the issues and stumbling blocks with that scheme?

There have been a lot of issues with ACRES, be it payments, specifications or the lack of certified trees for planting. People ended up importing trees from abroad. There was the results-based environmental agri pilot, REAP, scheme beforehand, which should have been a trial run to iron out all these problems. That is where our farm plans come in. We are on the ground. We can make our views heard and avoid some of these issues. I worked in an advisory capacity in respect of temporary contracts. When a farmer is ringing to ask if the money is going to come next week and saying that they have an overdraft, that is a difficult place for any farmer to be. Again, people's confidence is knocked. They have the money spent buying trees and posts and wire for fencing. It puts them in a dark place. It knocks confidence in the sector. As a young person looking to those farmers, one would have to question why some of them continue doing what they are doing when they are continuously let down by the Department.

In fairness, Mr. McGuire mentioned staged payments. That is a fantastic idea. It is something that should be fought for on behalf of farmers as well. If they could get staged payments as different projects are going along, it would help to progress these projects and get them over the line faster.

All I will say to the witnesses is that they should keep up the good work. What they are doing is fantastic. It is people like them with whom we need to be working.

I thank the witnesses very much for coming in. It is great to see the passion and drive they have. It does not really matter what sector of farming it is. For the farmers I speak to, it is a way of life. It is more than that, however. It is the communities that will be let down without the farmers. I see it in rural Ireland where schools are losing teachers. That has an effect on class sizes. Schools are losing teachers and classes are getting bigger. This has a knock-on effect the whole way along. It is the same with our merchants, shops and local pubs. Everything closes down. Then we have the issue, as the witnesses stated, that if there is nothing on the land, it goes wild. There are other issues in that regard.

The witnesses might talk to me about green certificate courses and the lack of education around the grants and schemes. Nobody else has really mentioned this. It would be lovely to see the colleges having more of an input into the schemes in order that there would somebody on a panel who could get in on the schemes. The witnesses are right; all of these schemes are done without the farmer's voice being heard. That cannot be the way we continue with schemes. I see this at home. We are suckler farmers. The farmer has to have an input. People are making decisions for farmers and for the welfare of the animals, and they are making them without farmers being involved. Farmers know their land best. They have to have that say.

The witnesses might talk to me about the green certificate course. What can be done better in that regard? Any problems should be easy to rectify. The witnesses mentioned schemes that are poorly designed. It was stated that only 40% of farms are deemed viable. The witnesses might talk about that.

On staged payments, it is always coming up to Christmas that the last money comes in. Other people have to be paid too. They have families and kids who are waiting for Santa or whatever. However, they have to pay their bills. When the farmer is only getting the last bit of money right before Christmas, it is unacceptable. We have to have staged payments that happen throughout the year as opposed to everything landing in the final two months of the year, because nobody can live like that. The rest of us or people in other jobs get paid weekly or monthly or whatever. Farmers generally get paid once or twice a year. That kind of thing cannot continue.

What are the witnesses getting back from the Minister? Mr. Feely has spoken to him. I do not know how much engagement he has had with the Minister. Is he getting any positive feedback on the different schemes? Has he asked whether a farmer panel can be formed in order to allow farmers have an input in respect of the schemes? Why does Mr. Feely think the number of ewes has dropped by 12% in the past five years?

I will touch on the first point the Deputy made that farming is a way of life. Farming is magic. We are all very lucky that our mothers and fathers worked hard to give us a good education, but it is the skills we learned coming along that have shaped us into the people we are today. We are out in January and February feeding ewes. In March and April, we are lambing the ewes. When we go out in May and see the lambs in the field, we get satisfaction from seeing the wrinkles of flesh and the sun shining and them running around content, and we know the decisions we made since the previous August or September were good when we bought a ram to suit our ewes. Again, that is coming in with Kepak and the bonus it has given. It is rewarding young farmers for those better quality lambs. There is a 30 cent bonus on the E and U grade lambs and 20 cent on the R grade lambs. I suppose that is different from most flat-rate prices factories are giving, but it is nice to see that they are acknowledging that. Again, it is giving them a more uniform, better confirmation carcase for selling into these markets.

The Deputy mentioned the Minister. The Minister launched the forum with us last April. He met us out on the farm in Dunshaughlin. It was great to talk to him and get our points across. We met him last month in the Department when he looked at our recommendations and took them on board. Again, we had the opportunity to talk with him.

Four main areas were covered in the document. He took them onboard. For some recommendations, he mentioned that access to funding could be an issue but that it is something that he will do. As for the likes of the schemes work, he was very keen on that. On these farmer panels, he sees too that there is a broken connection in communication and if that can be improved, it could reduce some of the issues with these schemes.

In terms of private colleges, some of our colleagues on the forum have gone to these private colleges, and while there are good teachers there, it is assets in terms of sheds and handling facilities that are lacking. They are not getting the same level of funding as the Teagasc colleges. It is very important that they be afforded these opportunities to show young farmers the top spec of product they can use and how these products can be used to improve farm efficiency and productivity.

With distance education, with the green certificate, we were talking to multiple people who are doing distance education, and it seems most people are going in and getting a piece of paper but they are not sure what they got out of it. They do not know about schemes or anything because they are not up to date. From what we are told, a lot of it is because classes are oversized. Once again, is that funding for the private colleges if classes are oversized? If they were narrowed down, with more classes spread out, would the student learn more? That is a very basic change that could be made, and it again goes back to funding for the colleges.

In terms of the 40% viable figure, again, that is leaving 60% either sustainable or vulnerable. Our parents have worked hard all their lives and have not been able to put money aside for a pension. Everything they have had, they put back into the farm, and that is their legacy. In most cases they hand farms on to us in better condition than they got them. That is where we need this agriculture committee. What do members want its legacy to be? Is it to be seen to support young farmers to get the sector back in a competitive sense? That is where we are at with that.

I thank Mr. Feely. I welcome the witnesses and thank them very much for coming in. It is good to see young people wanting to go into farming and stay in it, and we appreciate them very much for that. The witnesses mentioned planning, and in Kerry we are maybe better than what we seem to be hearing from them because farmers' sons and daughters are more or less guaranteed planning. It is other people in between, maybe neighbours, who can just have a site or maybe buy a site from someone local who has given all their life to that area and they are having trouble getting planning. I have asked the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste and the whole bloody lot of them to do something about that because the clause that is depriving those people of planning is called the open-generated clause, whereby they are trying to stop people coming out of towns, but what they are doing in tandem with that is stopping people who never were in towns but were outside in the country. I can understand that that could be happening in the witnesses' counties as well.

The witnesses mentioned pre-planning. Johnny Healy-Rae had a motion before Kerry County Council last week demanding that it commit to giving a four-week turnaround for pre-plannings. Someone in the witnesses’ areas might want to get at them about that because they have drifted to 11, 12 or 13 weeks, and that is a third of the year. The witnesses would do well to stay at that because that will have to be changed.

I see the problem where people say they cannot get land to lease. I can understand that, because we talked about it here at recent meetings. With these environmental schemes, there are people being paid out of the CAP to leave land idle. The likes of the witnesses should be considered for payment out of the CAP programme because they are producing something. In a very short while, food security will be of the utmost importance to farmers and consumers. We are only a small island, and if we are depending on Europe, or even on Brazil, New Zealand or other places, to supply beef and lamb, we could finish up in a tight corner, paying an awful price for it. We should appreciate the witnesses so much more.

The thing about generational renewal is it is happening everywhere, and we need to get some scheme going to entice farmers like the one who used to be there before, up until 2005 or 2006. It was a great scheme whereby farmers got so much to retire, and the young fella or girl got a boost to start them off. I can understand that, and I can understand why young farmers are a bit reluctant because there is nothing sure in farming. Like the witnesses said, it is a way of life. We were never sure of anything from one year to the next, and things are so different now because many people in our communities are used to a work-life balance and in farming you do not have that.

Willie was out at three o'clock last night. I got my cow to calf at three o'clock yesterday but that does not always happen. It is a demanding and onerous job. If we lose the calf, the cow will be gone for the year if it is a suckling. Do the witnesses have a lot of TB in their areas? Is that hitting them? It is hitting Kerry very hard. Do the witnesses have that in their counties?

It depends on what part of the county it is hitting too. I live in Mayo but where I went to college, there were many lads and girls from Galway and it is extremely hard to have an animal up around east Galway. There are multiple dairy farms around those areas and that is a lot of it too.

A lot of what we have happening in our area is to do with sheep. Previously, there were two or three fellas in every yard, and one could go to either side of the hill. In our place we go down into the national park, but people are not leaving their sheep. They do not have as many now because they cannot patrol the hills because of the sheer size. I know there are quads, but there are places quads will not go because it is not safe. Have the witnesses experienced that, whereby people are cutting the numbers?

I will touch first on the work-life balance. It is a fine line, but at the same time, we were very lucky as children to be able to work with our parents and siblings, be it in the evenings or on Saturdays and Sundays. We were learning skills for life. Not many people get that opportunity and we just want to acknowledge that we got an awful lot of information and have learned an awful lot from that generation. We are keen to see them have a confident future and to give us the ability to walk in their footsteps and take over.

There was a reference to access to farms. We have a problem down in Kerry whereby the State seems to be buying up land but not for farmers. It is buying it up to leave it idle. In our own little parish, it bought about 56 acres last year. It gave €440,000 for it, and there was no way it was worth half of that. That is driving up the price of land. Is that happening in the witnesses’ counties?

It is happening all over the country. Out our way, you could be heading out towards Leenane, and if mountains are coming up, it is companies that are buying them up.

We cannot regulate outsiders, but we should be able to regulate the State and prevent it from buying agricultural land that people lived off and could add to their farms, which would be ideal for people starting out.

In respect of the old retirement scheme the Deputy mentioned, we are bringing in a fund for the farmers so that they can stand back, but they are still there to support the young farmer.

They still have the help of their parents, aunts or uncles. They are still there but the financial burden has been taken off the older person and given to the young farmers, so they are in control. In a more realistic sense, if people are coming and going, their parents are pushing into their 70s, there is no financial output from it and it is still uncertain who is getting the farm. Then if someone says who is getting the farm, they have financial playback of the retirement to go on and are being looked after, and the young farmer is being looked after and is given the land and access to it. There are still great farmers in their 60s and 70s who are highly intensive farmers. I am not saying anything against anyone, but there are people who want to keep the lowest amount of stock and, as the Deputy says, go into a scheme where it looks like they can take the payment and keep the lowest amount of stock. That is grand in its own way but there may be someone who is willing to take it on and stock and farm the land, and get the payments while also being financially looked after where they are not stuck in a hole, wondering what they will do for money, since they are still young, if they give the farm to their son or daughter.

I thank the witnesses for coming in. It is great to see young farmers in front of us. As Deputy Aird said last week, he was at a mart and did not see any farmer around the witnesses' age. It is reflective of the fact that about 5% of farmers now are under 35. I studied the witnesses' documentation in detail. They made good recommendations and suggestions. I commend them on the work they have done. It is clear they have spent significant time discussing, working on and presenting this in a clear way. The retirement scheme for farmers, the potential for extending tax relief within family units, the land mobility and advisory service that the witnesses suggest, and rural planning are such big issues too, as are the funding of agri-colleges, how those courses could be made better, scheme designs and so many other aspects. I suggest to the committee that we take the research the witnesses have done along with that of Macra na Feirme, which was here last week or the week before and presented some important information to this committee. Many of the issues that the witnesses presented are similar, relating to land mobility and land access in particular. I would like to see a report, both from this forum and from the Macra na Feirme report from last week, that would go to the Minister for agriculture.

On land mobility, a farm came up close to me last year. A young farmer's son was looking to buy it. He bid good money and he was willing to take out every loan and access to finance he could get. Who bought it? A company that wants to plant it as a forest. It was devastating to that farmer because that young farmer's brother was getting the farm and this young lad wanted to be the farmer. He was willing to point all his money on this land and he was outbid. That is a big issue. It is not surprising then that we have such a major issue with land mobility. We have raised that with the Minister for agriculture and forestry.

What is the witnesses' perspective on extending the tax incentives? Can they explain that in more detail? If you are renting to a non-farmer, there is a tax incentive, but if you are renting to your son or nephew, maybe as a trial run for the young land getting the farm, you are penalised.

Regarding what the Deputy was saying, Dad mentioned back in the 1980s that there was a farm beside us with 100 acres of fine agricultural land. The farmer who owned it had no successor. He was willing to take a bit less off a young farmer coming along to buy it, but no young farmer was able to access capital at that time. It ended up in forestry too. It is disappointing. It goes to show that in the space of 30 or 40 years, we have not seen any improvements and the Government has not stepped in. We mentioned in the land mobility area that the Government could maybe buy farms in excess of 20 ha and do a rent-to-buy scheme for young farmers, maybe at a reduced interest rate.

On the tax relief, if you have two farmers side by side with two sons, the son is able to rent off the neighbour with no tax liability for that farmer, whereas if he approaches his own father, be it for a five-, seven- or ten-year lease, that money paid for rent becomes a tax liability for the latter. It is a practical and achievable measure in our recommendations.

It is realistic and basic, as we stated before. It is so straightforward that we do not understand how it is not in place already. For a group of young farmers like us to come and say it makes it sound stupid that it is not in place. Revenue and so on have to deal with that.

It is a very basic ask.

It is not even a money ask. We are just being realistic.

I and we as a committee will put it to the Minister on the witnesses' behalf. On the schemes, the witnesses talked about collaboration. A rate of €13 per ewe was promised by the Department under the sheep welfare scheme. Farmers have carried out those actions. The Department had undercalculated the sheep numbers by about 300,000 and farmers were left to suffer that loss. What impact did that have for the witnesses last year?

If you turn it the other way, the belief farmers have in the Government does not look too great. They were promised something and, next thing, they were told they were not getting it. There are many other jobs in which that would not happen, or where they would be told what to do. It did not look good for the Government side or for the farmers. I will let Ms Mahony take it from there. The uptake will not be as big if people are going to go into something, be told to take an extra action and then not even be fully paid for it.

Farmers' confidence in the Government and in the schemes to date is quite poor. This is just another example of why farmers are not entering schemes. You would have looked at the likes of the suckler scheme. Farmers are tied into that for five years too. There are harsh restrictions on them. Going forward, if they are not going to receive the money that they have been promised, I guarantee that farmers will not be in the schemes. Resulting from that, you will have another drop in ewe numbers. It is important that farmers who are producing the product and putting food on the table are rewarded. There have been plenty of other schemes where farmers were not producing a product or food for the table and were not let down, but time and again the sheep and suckler farmers have been let down, refused money or had payments reduced. It cannot keep happening. There are poor people here today. We might be here all polished up and in our suits, but we have spent our lives out lambing ewes in the cold of the spring. Industries depend on the people who went before us and the people who are coming after us, including the likes of Kepack and co-ops. The committee members all depend on the farmers. If we are not looked after, we will not be there. It is that simple.

On sustainability, every euro that is generated on Irish sheep farms returns between €1.30 and €1.50 for the local economy. All these schemes are improving our animal welfare and production efficiency, such as reducing the age of slaughter. It is important that farmers are confident in them and the schemes are not taken away from them.

I welcome the witnesses as a farmer myself. Their document is first class. I am glad to hear that the Minister engaged with them on a number of occasions, but engagement means that we need to see delivery. That is the key message that we need to send. If we do not see delivery for the young people in farming, we will not have farmers.

I intend to start yeaning on 6 January, with the help of my nephews, my own children and children from the village to lamb down in excess of 100 ewes in seven or eight days. I know it is ahead of me. Unfortunately, the workload is there. I have to say this. It warms my heart to see Ms Mahony and Ms Kennedy here, two girls who have a passion. That is no disrespect to the lads. I was brought up on a farm. At one time, it was seen that it was always male orientated. It warms me to see ladies and young people getting involved in producing what we call "food security". If we do not support young people, we are on a road to no town. Without the food and quality of food we produce in this country, there will be no lifestyle for any of us.

When I was growing up, they used to always tell any of the ladies in our house to make sure to get a fella who has lots of road frontage. That meant that you had to go where there was a site available, wherever it was. Now, it has changed because a lot of farms are actually inherited by ladies and younger ladies. It is great to see there is a future back in our rural communities.

I am delighted the witnesses are here today for more than one reason. There is a Bill going in front of the Dáil this evening. Certain people in that House think that foxes do not actually do any damage to lambs and do not take lambs. I would welcome the witnesses going into the Visitors Gallery later on to watch that vote because it just shows how absurd some people's minds are and that they do not see any damage being done. The witnesses know first-hand and we know first-hand. In fairness, this committee in here is rurally orientated. Everybody in this committee is of a farming background or a farming belief. Going forward, there is strength in numbers to support our young farmers and the industry.

I certainly agree about what will happen if we do not put infrastructure into the welfare schemes, especially for our hill farmers. I do not know whether the witnesses have numbers there regarding sheep farmed on hills compared with lowlands but we have seen a decline in the number of hill farmers because of eco-schemes and one thing or another. I would like the witnesses to comment on that. Farmers managed the hills a lot better when grass was let grow on them, they were grazed and the farmers brought sheep down off them for the winter time to lamb and whatever else. I would like the witnesses' comments on that.

All I can say is I support the witnesses' need to be supported. I am 52 years of age. I have a gossoon of 19 and I have another gossoon of 10. I have a girl who is 12 or 13 years of age who loves farming. It does my heart good when she comes out to me every evening, even if it is only to clean out her pony and throw nuts to the calves. It does my heart good. She is looking forward to the lambing season and I am looking forward to it because I have the backup of my family behind me. On the schemes, it was said there was reward from Kepak over better lambs. That is welcome. When you go to buy these five star rams, there is a huge cost to them and we have seen that for farmers. Do we need to put in a mechanism to support breeding stock that farmers intend to buy? Is it for aspects of the sheds, infrastructure or a whole clatter of it all?

As the Senator mentioned, there is a greater divide coming between the public and the farming sector. There is reference to the social licence to farm. It is very important that we get conversations going. We have done a lot of public relations work over the past couple of months through Kepak on the likes of TikTok and Instagram. We have brought the members here out to a farm, describing their systems and what they are doing to increase sustainability.

One of the recommendations there is a lambing school initiative, whereby a subsidised lamb could be given to secondary schools to cook. That would get the topic moving. We could further develop that into a farming module. Agri Aware has a very good initiative at the minute where farmers host meetings with students in schools. It is just to get the conservation going. That is why we are asking the agriculture committee to include it in its programme for work.

The Senator mentioned hill and lowland numbers. I might let Mr. McGuire talk about what he has seen on the hill.

Can I make a proposal, Cathaoirleach? I will run up for the vote and come straight back down. Could we let in Deputy Fitzmaurice and hold over the answers to some of my questions, please?

No. What we can do is that for questions that are unanswered, the witnesses will be able to forward the answers on.

Okay. I will be back anyway.

The witnesses may also answer them now and they will be on the transcript for the Senator as well. Does Mr. Feely want to finish answering those questions before we move on to Deputy Fitzmaurice or does he want to send them on later?

We will send them on later.

I welcome the witnesses. I had the pleasure of meeting them before. It is great to see young people interested in farming first of all and in sheep farming. I know some of them have cattle as well. The numbers of sheep have dropped so it is great to see sheep farmers here today. They are coming from different backgrounds. I know they are from Mayo, Kildare, Galway and Roscommon so they have different backgrounds and different types of land.

We are doing up a CAP proposal at the moment. Yesterday, we finished a lot of it. It has been sent and we have included young farmers. The committee did a fair piece on them in it because we are aware of their ideas. As was highlighted before and we are blue on the face from it, the big problem is that to live on a farm, you have to be able to get planning permission. If you are out near Ardgraigue or Westport, it is a different set-up than being in Kildare, with due respect. The only problem in Kildare is you could have TII stopping you building a house, as could be the case down in Roscommon with the new road. We are actually bringing TII in sometime in January to discuss these problems for young people who need to build houses, among other things. That has already been put on the programme. That will be of benefit and the public will be able to see that live here when TII comes in. We are discussing greenways and a lot of different things which will affect the witnesses down the line.

I talked to Mr. McGuire about it but when the young farmer starts - I will not say in public what we say down the country - they do not have much money. They have to try to get land and they have to try to get sheep or cattle to get the areas of natural constraints, ANC, payments if you are in an ANC area. For young farmers starting off, there is a 15% inspection rate on them. One thing I will say to every young farmer is that when you do your green cert, for the love of God, will they make sure they are in control of the financial aspect? That is where every young farmer falls. I know and the dog on the street knows that no one can go out and buy 20 bullocks or 20 cows this minute. Someone has to help them. There should be an understanding they have to be helped to get on their feet. No matter where I go, I see it week in, week out. I ask young farmers to make sure they are in financial control because that is one of the criteria for the young farmer scheme. If you are getting €8,000 from that, there is a penalty of €8,000 more. I keep saying it.

I think Mr. McGuire was talking about the three-year system and how a farmer gets a median of the number of acres or hectares he or she had for the first year, the second year and the third year. That is a good idea. As I said the night when I met the Young Sheep Farmer Forum, every idea it has is good. There is nothing I disagree with. Succession is a major problem for young farmers. In some parts of the country, it is more awkward than it is in others. We have talked about a retirement scheme here time and time again. The new CAP budget talks about helping young farmers.

I know it might be said that I was very blunt that night. The problem is that the EU at the moment is cutting that budget. At the moment it is 24%. That is the first belt that has gone at it. Hopefully it will be less. We wrote it into our document yesterday. The Chair and the committee has put forward that the Government will bring it up. If you look at the aspirations that are on the new CAP, it is €300,000 - happy days - to get you going to buy a lot of sheep. The problem is where we get all this money from. If we do not help young farmers, we will be in trouble.

In the line of the sheep side of it, I believe that this needs to be a partnership. Government support is one side of it. I know I met Eoin - I am not singling him out - but factories have to step up to the mark as well. We cannot have a seesaw situation where it is one year down, one year up a bit and one year down again. Even if it is like a purchaser group that does a five-year plan with young farmers to bring them forward, we need to ensure a deal is done to keep them in the game.

The facts are, and I have said this openly, that 160,000 fewer cattle have been killed this year and 40,000 fewer cattle have been exported. Add the figures. It does not take a mathematician. There is a factory somewhere in this country that is going to come under pressure. There is a mart somewhere in this country that will come under pressure. If we keep losing 250,000 cows - I know Michael deals with cows and that - all we will have is grey grass or brown grass in a field and one beast wandering around. It is no good. It is not productivity. If you look at Europe and what it has lost in farmers over the last few years, it is time to wake up, to be quite frank about it. This committee agrees.

I think the witnesses have great ideas. It is good that the Minister is engaged with them, but it is about engaging and welcoming it. We all welcome the witnesses. They would nearly be carried out there a shoulder-high because they put out a great performance, but the bottom line is, going forward, the witnesses need the vision and to know where they are going for at least five years and to have the return for their work. They are educated young people - every one of them here today. I asked all of them what they had done. They have other choices. Most of the youth of this country have other choices now. All I am saying to them is to keep up the good work. They can answer the few bits or elaborate on the bits I have talked about, but it is great to see them coming in.

There are a lot of points to cover there. If the witnesses like, there is an opportunity to quickly answer a number of them. I am conscious as well that there are other unanswered questions from earlier contributors. The opportunity is available to the witnesses to make a submission on any unanswered questions as well and to send them on to the committee.

I might touch a small bit on the 24% cut.

The questions are on the transcript if they want to have a look over and check on any ones that remain unanswered.

In terms of the 24% cut, it is a savage knock to farmers' confidence. We acknowledge that there is talk of increasing the young farmer allocation from 3% to 6%, but on a reduced budget it is the same figures that are being moved around. We are potentially losing it to another sector, be it the likes of the sheep improvement scheme or those measures.

The Deputy mentioned TII and CPO. A person in an office can draw a line, be it a cycle path or a roadway, and that farmer's land is as good as sterilised until that project is completed. We had the N5 at home. One of our colleagues, Eva, is facing into the greenway in Cavan and Leitrim. That is a serious psychological pressure. I saw it at home. We built a shed in 2008 and we had to get a letter of approval to say that the shed was not going to affect the N5 corridor. The road is only being constructed now. It is going on nearly 20 years. I do not know if my colleagues have anything to add.

The Deputy referred to the cattle numbers disappearing. The numbers have reduced for cattle and sheep. They are not going to go up again. That is the first thing. The numbers for cattle, suckler and sheep farmers are not going to go up again. It is about stabilising what is there so it does not keep declining. If it keeps declining it will be environmental all over and it will be grass growing in over everything. If that is the way it is going to end up, it will not suit any of us here.

The Deputy mentioned a partnership. We are here talking to the committee. There is no point in us talking to the committee and nothing else happening with it. The committee can go on further with it, but if it is ignored, there is no sense in any of it. If the Government listens to the committee, it links back and we would think it would be mighty. The farmers would see the Government listening to the agriculture committee. It all links in together.

An bhfuil aon duine eile ag iarraidh labhairt?

A point was brought up about access to land. It is our biggest issue. Everyone here knows that, unlike a lot of businesses - that is what we want to run, a business - land cannot be mustered up from anywhere. You cannot decide you want to farm and pluck land out of thin air. It has to be existing land. We see that a lot of existing land owners do not want to see the land go from farming. A lot of them are sitting on a massive asset which they could sell, but they do not want to because they do not want to see it gone from farming. At the same time, they do not have any financial stability to stop farming it themselves.

We are seeing with some schemes, in particular for sheep with a lot of land types that sheep are on in this country, we have seen a big uptake in the organic farming scheme. I reiterate that I am not talking about all people that have entered that scheme, but a lot of people have taken it almost as a retirement scheme. That is where I see that there is an appetite for a retirement scheme. People are going into this scheme and reducing their production so much that they essentially have no notable sheep production. People are running ewes, drawing an organic farming scheme payment and not even putting a ram out to the ewes. Those farmers have essentially taken a retirement scheme. They are getting their payment. It is allowing them to live on but the land is being retired with them. It is not being farmed. If we were able to put in a scheme that gives them their financial stability after a lifetime of hard work, even though they might not have had the financial reward, they have put in a lifetime of hard work. They are looking to retire, as we see with the reduction of lamb production, but that land is not being returned to a way that someone else can farm it. We will be looking to see if there is something there.

I raise an idea they had. I was reading it the last night I met them. If I lease to you, it is tax free under Revenue, but it is about getting an older generation to give it to the youngsters, be it their son, daughter or whatever. If we do not get a system where there is some recognition that an older person can lease to the son or daughter and get some tax concession, we will have a major problem because many of them do not want to let go.

Before we finish up, from the group as a whole, I thank the committee for listening to our recommendations today. I am sure the rest of my colleagues would agree that if we all had the chance, we would be farming full time. This country was built on the backs of our farmers. Entire industries depend on them. They depended on the farmers that have gone before us and they will depend on us in the future. The unfortunate side is that this has been forgotten. Our recommendations only go so far. We rely on the committee going forward to take our recommendations and to do something for it, to be seen to represent their farmers and the people who put food on plates across the country.

Going forward in the CAP negotiations, domestic budgets and the work for 2026, I ask the committee to think about the farmers - the young farmers of this country - the hundreds, if not thousands of us, who are in the same boat, all wishing every day that we could be there farming in the misery of it all. We have options. We are educated. We can go on and get jobs, but we still want to be there. We still want to dedicate our lives to that land. We are not ready to give up, and we expect the same from the committee. We need to see that young farmers are represented in the future.

On behalf of the committee, I thank Mr. Michael Feely, Ms Aoife Mahony, Mr. Darren McGuire and Ms Nicola Kennedy for taking part and for the discussion earlier.

We listened with interest and I am pretty sure we are going to be hearing from you again. Go raibh milé maith agaibh as an cur i láthair agus as na freagraí. Táim cinnte go mbeimid ag plé le chéile arís amach anseo.

Before we begin I want to bring to your attention that witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to the committee. This means that witnesses have a full defence in any defamation action for anything said at a committee meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and may be directed to cease giving evidence on the issue of the Chair's direction. Witnesses should follow the direction of the Chair in this regard and are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that, as is reasonable, no adverse commentary should be made against an identifiable third person or entity. Witnesses who are to give evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as a witness giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on the matter. Privilege against any defamation does not apply to the publication by you, outside of the proceedings held by the committee, of any matters arising from the proceedings. Leanfaimid ar aghaidh, mar sin, with the challenges facing the sheep sector. In this session, the committee will hear from Ms Blátnaid Gallagher from the Galway Wool Co-operative. You are very welcome and thank you for your patience. There was fairly enthusiastic questioning earlier and we will have an opportunity to go through your material in detail. Your opening statement has been circulated. You have five minutes to read your submission and afterwards there will be questions and answers with committee members.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the committee for inviting me here today. Six years ago I founded a national wool co-op. Its purpose is an annual national harvest of wool from our native sheep breed that is actually called Galway sheep. Why? I knew Irish sheep farmers, especially those who had preserved our native breed for over 120 years, had a world-class product but no access to a fair market. A market certainly exists, but for Irish wool growers the doors have been bolted shut. During my master's degree in agricultural innovation, it became unmistakably clear that our farmers are producing an unrivalled fibre - a biofibre - yet they are being denied fair remuneration for it. As a volunteer I have spent almost every day since navigating the quagmire that is the Irish wool sector.

Over the past six years, the story of native Irish wool from the Galway sheep breed has carried me far beyond Ireland. I have been invited to speak in Sweden, Poland, Rome, Spain and Brussels. More recently I finally had the honour of telling the story here at home. Our work has reached local Spanish radio and national Canadian radio platforms, international media platforms and now, at last, Irish radio and television. The world is listening and, finally, Ireland is listening too. However, I want to be honest: these six years have not been simple. There were months when I nearly gave up, but surrender is not in my nature. I cannot walk away from the hard-working sheep farmers I have had the privilege to know. Every summer, farmers and their families contact me, desperate to find a market for their wool. I take hundreds of calls and emails from journalists, students and researchers all eager to reach the truth. We have a product of value. We all know a market exists and consumers tell me the same. They are baffled and often furious that they have spent their money on Irish woollen products that turn out not to contain Irish wool. They feel cheated, especially the tourists. Our farmers feel forgotten and our national wool story has been abandoned to confusion and misrepresentation. The truth of the matter is that Ireland no longer has an Irish wool industry. We have farmers producing meat, with wool treated merely as a by-product, one that has become a deficit to the sheep sector. With the right incentives and the right national strategy, sheep's wool could once again be a source of income. Our construction, thermal and biomaterial sectors might finally stop ignoring a highly valuable fibre grown on Irish soil.

These businesses must be incentivised to make the switch and finally open the conversation that for too long has been avoided in boardrooms across this country.

Strong wool, often grown here in Ireland, is already being used in hundreds of new and innovative applications worldwide, yet here at home, despite hosting one of Europe’s largest insulation manufacturers, we continue pumping fossil fuels and polymers into our homes, supported by State finance. In our booming heritage, textile and retail sector, Irish heritage branding is everywhere, yet the raw material upon which that heritage was built, native Irish wool, is entirely absent. Tourists buy Aran jumpers, tweed jackets, blankets and carpets believing they come from Irish sheep; they do not. This connection has been severed. This year, our internationally award-winning Irish Wool Co-op, recognised across the EU as a model for farmer-led innovation, contacted almost 30 mills and woollen businesses seeking a partnership for our 2025 harvest. Most did not respond. Others were bemused we even reached out at all. However, one mill did step forward, that is, Avoca Ireland, an early adopter that recognised the value of a truly native Irish wool offering and the importance of paying for the hard work of the growers who produce it.

Ireland has almost 3.6 million sheep. Their wool, and the lanolin within it, has value. This fibre once built empires, and yet Irish farmers are receiving nothing for it. Why? Because there is no transparency, no oversight and no watchdog protecting farmers at the farm gate. Demand for wool globally is rising. Supply is falling, and while basic economics tells us this should mean rising prices, Irish growers see none of it. We once had mills in every county - cleaning, scouring, spinning, manufacturing. Wool cheques mattered. They supported families and rural communities. Sheep’s wool is being dumped under hedgerows. Irish family wool merchants are actually disappearing, and into this vacuum steps UK-based Curtis Wool, one of the largest wool collectors in the northern hemisphere, absorbing Irish depot after depot. Hear this: if every Irish merchant becomes a subcontractor to one global buyer, competition disappears and, with it, Irish control over Irish wool.

Recent Government manifestos have acknowledged the crisis, or should I say scandal. Nearly €1 million has been invested in academic research, but where are these outcomes? Who owns this intellectual property? Where are the measurable improvements in farm gate pricing? A manifesto promising investment has slowly dissolved into an examination. Tens of thousands have gone into studies, far away from the horror that farmers are living and their reality.

I thank Ms Gallagher. We need to get to questions and answers. The opening statement and material will be available on the committee's website as well. Members will have had the opportunity to read through it.

I thank Ms Gallagher very much for her opening statement. The line stating she will not surrender because surrender is not in her nature is great to hear, in fairness. Ms Gallagher's heart is in the right place. The other sentence I take from what she said is, "The past is glorious. The present is ambiguous. But the future can be reclaimed." I think it can be reclaimed.

I want to get Ms Gallagher's comments on the following. There are almost 300,000 traditional homes in Ireland, all of which will be best served by using breathable materials such as sheep's wool insulation. It is included in the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, as an insulation option, yet we are having to import almost all of it. I would really like to hear Ms Gallagher's thoughts with regard to the investment need upon Government to back the cleaning process here in Ireland that will allow us to use this supreme, locally produced, renewable, low-carbon product in the construction sector rather than importing millions of tonnes of oil-based materials with a huge carbon footprint.

I thank the Deputy very much for the question. I did not get a chance to read my whole opening statement, but those who have read it will notice that I do quantify the fact that, when we have decided where the market is and when we know how much wool we need to put into that market, that is the point when we decide to start to invest in infrastructure. I am currently a member of an EU focus group run by CAP Network. One of the real issues we have noticed is that cleaning mills and scouring mills are closing down all over Europe because they are not getting enough wool into them. Therefore, before we start building a scouring mill, what I would say is find the market and if that is insulation then see if we can incentivise. We have one of the largest producers of insulation in Europe based here in Ireland, but when it is contacted, its attitude is that it is already doing the sustainable thing anyway. However, it has no draw to make that sheep's wool product. We have sheep's wool insulation here in Ireland, but it is not made from sheep's wool. We have an Irish Grown Wool Council, which is promoting products like that, but it is not promoting products that are actually made from Irish wool. Part of that reason is because we have no certification. We have no traceability. People can call anything Irish.

I do not think we should start off in the morning and start promoting sheep's wool unless it is actually sheep's wool that is grown here in Ireland and paid a good price for to Irish farmers. That is my bottom line. If it is coming off Irish farmers, I would go to the moon and back looking for markets for them, but if it is going to be coming from another country and, worst of all, if it is coming from China or the other side of the world, why should we go out and create markets for wool that is not grown here in Ireland? Yes, for insulation, cleaning and infrastructure, but let us put the horse in front of the cart and find out how much of our own wool, with fair trade going back to farmers and the farm gate, we can actually market first. If that is in the millions and millions of tonnes, then set up the infrastructure. There is no harm in bringing our wool to Bradford as long as we can trace it going there and coming back. That is what is going to happen all over Europe. There is already competition between the Portuguese and the Bulgarians and now the British are trying to say they want that northern European wool to come to them. They will wash our wool, but we just have to make sure it is our own wool that we get back and that we market and promote that.

Ms Gallagher is saying there are hundreds of people contacting her year after year about getting rid of wool.

Yes.

What becomes of that wool and where does it go to?

It goes to the depots, and the depots then have to bring it to Bradford. The UK marketing house is in Bradford. We do not have anyone here in Ireland who is cleaning or manufacturing with Irish wool that comes off Irish farms directly. Every part of the process has to go abroad. However, there are green shoots. There are several businesses. I mentioned a really fantastic business called Ériu in County Wicklow. It is a farm to yarn initiative. There is another girl down in Belclare in Tuam, County Galway. She is trying to open up a mini-microprocessing plant. Therefore, we can do this at micro level, but bear in mind the infrastructure required to build a massive mill. Remember that 3.6 million sheep multiplied by 2 kg is almost 7 million kg of wool. How in the name of God are we going to overnight open up the infrastructure, find the employees, find the graders and find the finance when we do not have the market? We are trying to build a house to clean wool for a market we do not have. We are just bringing it over to somebody else, pushing it over there and letting them do something about it.

I presume farmers are not benefiting out of the wool financially.

Not only are they not benefiting but, as I stressed in my opening statement, it is a deficit. If it is costing a farmer €2 to shear a sheep, unlike the circumstance with the co-op, and I will go back to the co-op that I run again, and the farmer is bringing that wool to the local depot or local wool merchant, they are giving the farmer 60 cent. The farmer has just paid between €2 and €3 to shear the sheep, so he or she is already at a deficit. Farmers are being told - it is bred into them almost - that wool is waste. It is not waste. It is being used in other countries as a highly valuable product. If you go out tomorrow morning to buy a carpet for your house, the most expensive carpet you will buy is a wool carpet. If you go out to buy a coat, the most expensive coat you will buy is a wool coat. There are people, businesses and manufacturers out there in the world who know how valuable and fantastic our wool is. We took our eye off the ball. When synthetic fabrics started to come in here, we took our eye off the ball.

It is great to see Ms Gallagher. I met her in Brussels quite recently and we had a day's engagement. I was blown away by her enthusiasm and commitment. I take it that the top she has on her is Irish wool.

It is, yes.

She is a great advertisement for the fashion wool sector.

Ms Gallagher might just touch on that point in a minute because she made a very strong case about it in Brussels.

I have two or three things to discuss. Ms Gallagher’s statement was circulated to us and we all read it. I am particularly interested in best practice internationally. Ms Gallagher mentioned Great Britain, the wool revival and that issue. She also mentioned Wales, Sweden and New Zealand. In a few moments, she might share with us the experiences there and the unique differences between each of those jurisdictions. What were the positives to be taken from those countries? I do not want to hear about the negatives. I want to hear what experiences from those countries we can apply to the Irish experience.

Ms Gallagher also touched on the issue of the scouring of the wool. We do not have a facility in the Republic.

No.

She also mentioned Bradford. The whole industry there has gone, certainly in terms of the knowledge and the workforce. Traditionally, certainly in the northern counties, they all went to Bradford. That was particularly interesting.

The key to all this, and the key message from Ms Gallagher, is certification, transparency and traceability and whether a product is uniquely Irish. What is important in the international market is that something is an Irish product of quality. It is also about being a biofibre. Ms Gallagher talked about and illustrated that point very well.

Those are some of the issues I would like Ms Gallagher to talk about. They include best international practice and the scope for using wool in fashion. In Ireland, we have people at the cutting edge of design. We could go up to the Grafton Academy. I know people who are in Seville in Spain lecturing on the market for wool in clothes design. I ask Ms Gallagher to share some thoughts on those points.

I thank the Senator very much. As a part of this journey I have been on, I took sheep, I think it is four years ago now, up to the National College of Art and Design, NCAD. It was a pretty hairy experience driving a trailer with sheep and lambs in the back into the building, which has a curve and archway. I did that because I wanted the students in the college to know where wool came from. If we are honest, most of them did not have a clue where wool actually came from. I do not mean that in any disrespectful way, but it is not on their agenda. They have been told - it has almost been beaten into them - that Irish wool is just not wearable. What is really fascinating is that our neighbour next door has proved that practically and categorically wrong. Over the last three years, they have encouraged the fashion houses in the UK to bring their heritage tweed and outerwear products right back to the farm level. I am going around begging weaving mills here in Ireland to take our wool. I was told by the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland that if I created a supply chain, the textile houses in Ireland would have no choice. I created a supply chain, and I will give the committee an example of what happened to our wool for four years when it was processed here in Ireland. I am going to send examples of the woollen products around the room, and I am going to send them in one direction to ensure they come back to me, if that is all right. There is not one for everybody in the audience.

To go back to the Senator’s question, design, innovation and creativity are the difference between me being able to wear this woollen product and not being able to do so. We also lack processing facilities in Ireland. What is the difference in wool? There are two types. We have merino wool, which is tender and soft. If there is anybody here wearing a jumper, there is a chance it is made from merino wool and it either came from the southern hemisphere or, more seriously alarming, from a huge industrial sheep farm in China. Strong wool is what we produce in northern Europe. The beauty of this wool is that it can be used in strong applications and in outerwear. That all depends, however, on how it is processed.

We were supported by one of the largest spinning mills, one of only three spinning mills left in Ireland. It took the wool for four years, during which it consistently told us it could not sell it. For four years, my nerves were in bits wondering how I was going to find a market for this wool for these farmers. I could not understand how the mill could not sell it and yet over in the UK the most incredible garments were being made out of strong wool. They are even able to make jumpers out of mountain wool. Any of the members here from a constituency that has mountain sheep or strong horny sheep will know what this is.

We have nothing only mountains.

That is fantastic. I am delighted for the Deputy. How is it that in the UK they can make strong wool jumpers and they cannot do it here? How is it they have mills over there that are only dying to see the farmers start getting paid again?

To go back to the processing, we had wool processed for four years here in Ireland. It was spun here in Ireland by one of the country’s most reputable and largest spinning companies. I have an example here of what was produced. I now know why that company could not sell it. I would not buy it either. We then had this example produced in the UK, which comes from the same wool, from the same type of sheep and is of the same micron size. I will pass the two examples around to the members. If they had two Christmas stockings to open, which of them would they prefer to get? Would they prefer the one processed here in Ireland, which I dare say, in my personal opinion, was produced without due respect to the farmer and the sheep, or would they prefer the other one, which is the same product produced differently? The companies then tell us we cannot wear wool. This is why we cannot wear wool. It is because nobody here in Ireland is willing to process our strong wool so it can be worn. The companies are addicted to merino wool, and to the price and the supply chain with which that merino wool is coming into the spinning mills here in Ireland and then being churned out as Irish wool.

I thank Ms Gallagher.

Well done.

I call Senator Collins.

Can the Senator see the difference?

Yes, there is some difference. I thank Ms Gallagher so much for being here. It is not something I would have huge knowledge about. My eyes were opened to what is actually going on when I heard the story and had conversations with Ms Gallagher and my colleague, Deputy Donna McGettigan, who told me that anything I have in my wardrobe is more than likely not Irish wool. I am not going to take up much time because I want to hear about all the different aspects from Ms Gallagher, and the answers to all the other questions. From working directly with the growers, what does Ms Gallagher think is the single biggest barrier to Irish wool?

A lack of processing is part of the problem, but there is also the fact that we are openly marketing and selling Brand Ireland. We have an international reputation for Irish wool and Irish products. That is Brand Ireland, and it is what everybody in this House is so proud of. I am such a proud Irish woman, but we are selling that brand down the Swanee. The more tourists I speak to and the more radio and TV interviews I do, the more people are going to find out. It is not that I intentionally want to go out there and destroy an industry. I want the industry to realise it cannot continue to neglect farmers, take their wool and lead them to believe it is worthless. It is not worthless. Unfortunately, after 20 years, the farmers are starting to believe that. They are not getting paid for it. I see the examples of products I circulated came back to me. That is great. You are all very honest.

It is Leinster House.

The farmers are not getting paid for it. What is stopping it? We do not have any traceability. I am on a European wool focus group. Other members of the group ask me why I am there because Ireland has a worldwide international reputation and we have Irish tweed, blankets, carpets and so on. We are known the world over, so why am I sitting on a focus group. It is because there is no Irish wool in those products and nobody is shouting “Stop”.

I do this voluntarily. I sold €90 worth of wool last year. My husband is in the Gallery, unfortunately, so I do not want to say openly how much I spent on travel and expenses for where I have been. Thank God, we have WhatsApp. If we were paying for a telephone bill, Jesus, I cannot imagine what that would be like. I am doing this because somebody has to blow the whistle. The abuse of Brand Ireland has to stop. The abuse of the growers, where the wool is being taken from them, has to stop. We have a market. It was rightly said that there is insulation. We are selling Irish-branded insulation here in Ireland that comes from Austria. Is that the insulation we are going to incentivise to be put in our homes? People are abusing Brand Ireland and I am sick of it. That is why I spend day and night on the phone and why I came up here on a bus to talk to the committee. I am tired of being the only person who is blowing the whistle on this. We set up the Irish Grown Wool Council and what did it do? It started promoting products from companies here in Ireland that were not made from Irish wool. Where does it stop?

It does not make sense.

I agree that the council was aligning itself very closely with Irish woollen businesses, which do need to be supported, given a lot of heritage products are not even made here in Ireland. I am all for having weaving and spinning mills here in Ireland and supporting rural economies. Those are the ones we should be supporting. I will take the next question.

That is great. I thank Ms Gallagher. I am going to give the rest of my time to other members to ask questions. I thank Ms Gallagher for being here. I also think it is crazy. We are giving out about Mercosur beef coming in and being processed and packaged here and not having that written on the label but having a shamrock on it instead.

This is the same except it is not food. It is coming from the other side.

It is also important that we have the opportunity to discuss this with the Irish Grown Wool Council. It may have a view to express in this regard.

That is if the committee can get in contact with it. The calls I answer are from people who have tried over and over again to communicate with the council but they cannot get in contact with it.

I thank Ms Gallagher for coming in. What is going on is sacrilegious. It is so wrong. I can remember all my young life being told of farmers and people who became very wealthy from wool. One such man is Michael Big Dan Kelleher, who is close to the Cathaoirleach in the Shehy Mountains, which is between the two of us. He accumulated enough money to buy a big farm in Waterford. Between the three or four brothers, they had 2,000 or 3,000 sheep and he walked 550 of them all the way from Kilgarvan to Waterford. His family is still farming there. Many others made a lot of money out of wool. We know now that sheep farmers are only barely existing. At that time, there were three or four men in every yard sheering the wool themselves but help is hard got now. You could not actually pay people to take time off from other things for a day to sheer their wool, so they combine to get different people to do it.

We also have prime places and opportunities to sell it. Avoca has a place in Moll’s Gap between Kenmare and Sneem. Eadie’s mill is in Killorglin for over 100 years. I think it is the fifth generation of the Eadie family running the mill between Killorglin and Beaufort. Then we have the Quills who are from the Cork side but there are more of them in Kerry now thankfully. We are very glad of them and they are selling a lot of clothes of all kinds, including a lot of wool products. We would have the outlets if the issue were sorted out.

Another useful wool is Terram, which is used for putting on the roads. I do not know if the committee is aware of that. If there were nothing else but wool, a road could be made up a bog. It would keep the water down and stop the gravel or whatever from going down through it. It could be made over a shaky bog and there would be no bother in the world. It was often done. It is shameful for it to be wasted like that. It is great that Ms Gallagher is so outspoken about this because someone needs to speak out about it. I am sure it would help farmers if they could get a proper price for wool.

I said earlier today that a lot of farmers now, particularly younger farmers coming in, are cutting down on the number of sheep they have because it is too hard for one man to manage big hills, valleys and glens and trying to get the sheep out. One of the reasons they are cutting back is they cannot manage to sheer their sheep and make anything out of it. Is there any precise thing we should be told about what we should be doing inside this place? This is where policies start from. We are grateful for what Ms Gallagher has said already but if there is anything precise she feels we should be presenting in the Chamber, we would only be glad to help at any time.

The most important thing for me today is that we closely assess certification and that, once and for all, we stop this misbranding of Brand Ireland because it is damaging to our international trade reputation.

With regard to money that is going towards academic research, of which there has been plenty, there must be some validation or metric tied to that funding so that it can be measured whether it effectively changed the farm gate price. If it did, that is great. If it did not, however, why do we fund it and will we continue to fund that kind of research? The Government's assessment indicated it would look at the Irish wool crisis. There is looking at something and doing something about it. Why do we not look at these businesses and ask them why they do not use Irish wool? They are going to say they cannot use it and Irish wool is not suitable for their products, but members should not forget the two hats in front of me or that we are not stupid anymore. We are not listening to the "BS" that is coming from the Aran industry here in Ireland. Depending on how it is processed, Irish wool is highly valuable. We do not even have to put it into our ordinary daywear. I am talking about Irish tweed, blankets and bedding that all contains Irish woollen products that came from wool that has no close association to Irish soil whatsoever. Certification and traceability are needed.

I thank Ms Gallagher for her contribution. I spoke to Dermot Connolly the other day and he told me that he had worked with her in setting up the original Galway co-op. The key thing for farmers is the price they get. Before Ms Gallagher came in, we had young people before the committee who talked about trying to get into the sheep sector and all the barriers in that regard. Many of them said they would love to be full-time farmers but it is not possible because there is not enough money in it. They have to have an off-farm income. To what level are sheep farmers being undervalued? To what level is their wool being undervalued compared to what it should be? I know it is hard to be precise about it but I ask that question in general terms.

On a positive note, what I decided with the co-op was that we would harvest wool from our native breed. In order that committee members are all aware, it is called Galway wool. It is an Irish national wool co-op. It is not about sheep that come from Galway. It is a native sheep breed. At that time, the price paid for sheering sheep was €2.50 per kilogram of wool. That was it. If a farmer is not getting €2.50 per kilo, they have lost money - end of story. If they are not getting €2.50, it costs them and they are at a deficit. I do not know any other business in the world where people harvest a product, not get paid for that product, or even get paid for the cost of the harvesting, and would then continue to do it. We have it written into our legislation that, by law, sheep must be sheered. We are making the farmers do it. We know there is a marketplace and the product has value but, at the same time, they are not being paid for it. We have consolidation at an international level that is leading to price regulation that is pricing out the farmer, knowing that the farmer has to surrender the wool anyway.

The €2.50 per kilogram is the return to the farmer. Is that reflective of the value of the product when it goes into the garment?

No. Some of the products that are made from some of the wool, such as the high-end cashmeres and mohairs or alpaca wools, could be up to €20 per kilogram, depending on the grade of the wool. With honest-to-goodness Irish common cross-bred wool, no farmer should be giving away that wool at less than €2.50 per kilogram. It just should not happen. It would be daylight robbery. That wool then is being brought to Bradford and traded. Our merchants have little choice because there are few marketplaces for them to bring the wool to. Worldwide consolidation is leading to this crisis and scandal here in Ireland. We can do something about it. We can hold our heads high, straighten our backs and look into our housekeeping and what has gone on in our island and industries. If we straighten them out first, we can then go to the world and say, “You are not taking our wool any more”.

Regulation for traceability is probably one of the key factors in this because when the wool goes to Bradford, where it has to go at the moment because there is nowhere else, we are not sure what wool we are getting back.

Exactly.

What process can we initiate here to make that happen?

We need to make it imperative that wool going to Ireland, or wool that turns up in Ireland branded as Irish wool, must have certification and traceability. For example, say our ten red socks end up in a laundrette and they are all identical. If one of us comes back that evening and asks which sock is theirs, there is a good chance that someone behind the counter has put some kind of a process in place where they can identify each person’s sock. We have blockchain and AI.

We have service providers here in Ireland that are only chomping at the bit to be able to assist us but we have nobody enforcing this regulation. If the Deputy does not mind me saying so, part of the issue is the fact that I am speaking about a raw material. In reality we are having this conversation in the wrong committee room. This is the agriculture committee but I should be appearing before the enterprise committee because this is a manufacturing issue. This is a raw material. Once it leaves a farm, it is an unwashed raw material. All I can do as a witness before this committee is bring to members' attention the fact that this raw material is being used in another part of the world and it has a high value. If we decide to have a Department of agriculture, food, fibre and the marine, then it could come back under the umbrella of this committee.

The great British wool revival is ongoing. Indeed, there is a programme on television at the moment on knitting and so on. That whole theme which has come in there has obviously worked from their point of view for their wool. We know that Britain is a much larger producer of sheep and sheep's wool than Ireland but what lessons can we learn from the British?

In Britain they have the same or similar breeds. It is all strong wool but there is more integrity involved there. There is very little integrity, based on my experiences over the last six years, within the Irish textile and weaving sectors. There is a lot of ambiguity and misrepresentation. When one looks at Ireland's largest spinning mill, that is what it produced with native Irish wool, but when one goes across the water, that is the difference. Is that a business or company that is setting out to bring out the best application and best finish? We need to question our integrity. We really need to question the honesty of how we are producing wool here in Ireland.

I will make one final point. This is something that has come up on several occasions in this committee. We have had people come in here who told us about Irish whiskey where the only Irish thing in it was the water. Products must have integrity when they are labelled as Irish. This is an issue that the committee should examine more closely, not just from the perspective of wool but from the perspective of food production as well. It is probably a piece of work that we need to consider in the future. I just wanted to flag that.

Yes. There will be room for discussion in February. It also came up earlier in the context of Irish lamb. Senator Brady is next.

I am a sheep farmer. When I shear a sheep, I get around 54 cent per kilo.

The Senator is doing well.

It was down as low as 27 cent a few years ago. Mr. Gerard Farrell, a local merchant in Lanesborough, tells me that the market in England fluctuates as much as the market for oil or gas. Sometimes he has to hold all of his wool in storage until it reaches a normal price and he can trade. I do not know whether Ms Gallagher has ever heard of a sheep called ryeland.

Yes, I have.

A lovely couple, John Haws and Karen Ashton, live just over the road from me. They have a ryeland flock. They send their organically produced lamb to one of our guests in the audience today, Mr. Seamus Keane from Costcutter in Drumlish, and it is beautiful lamb. They actually send over their wool to England to be processed because they see a value in wool. They follow it over purposely to make sure they get back their own wool. They can turn one fleece into €35 and over. They can do that, as a small business in a little village in County Longford. Karen comes from England and can see the worth in her ryeland wool. She cannot understand how we have not seen the value in our product here. It costs €3 to shear a sheep today. That same fleece, if one is lucky, will fetch €1. So, the farmer is minus €2 but in terms of the health and management of sheep, shearing has to be done. It is compulsory to shear one's flock. I totally agree with everything Ms Gallagher has said here.

A couple of years ago I met with Mr. Seán McNamara, current president of the ICSA, regarding setting up a washing plant in this country. Unfortunately, it was shot down by the EPA and a number of other bodies. There is a place in County Longford, formerly known as Burlington's, that washed denim for a number of years so the plant and facility is there to wash wool, with a little bit of modification. It could have actually been a business. There was a company in Longford that was taking in and breaking up mattresses, with the fibre being recycled for use in insulation. That company wanted to take in wool to see if it could pull the wool apart and put it into a fibre base for use in isolation. Wool used in insulation costs roughly €70 per roll so it is unviable at this moment in time to use recycled wool in insulation. We need to get some sort of scheme up and running where we incentivise some company to use Irish wool for insulating homes here and no better place to start than in our local authorities. If we incentivised our local authorities to use an Irish insulation product, we would gain from a green energy and a recycling perspective. We would also have goodwill from the farmers.

As a farmer, I am with Ms Gallagher. How we move from where we are today to developing a viable business is a challenge and I would love to know the answer.

It is very simple. We just need a dog with teeth. We need a task force. The council was set up in good faith. It was understood that it would be full of people like me who were shouting for the farmer and hoping that it raised the price at the farm gate but as soon as the council was set up, people jumped on it from the textile sector. Why would we send a fox in to look after the chickens?

They want to do that here too.

There is nobody within industry---

Another day for the fox.

The reality is that this is a raw material. All over the world the price of this raw material is falling because farmers are going into boardrooms with textile manufacturers, often huge conglomerates, and are being told to make sure they get the Government to do X, to get rid of all of the synthetics, to do this and that but when it comes to paying farmers for the wool, for which they have given their face, their integrity and pictures of their sheep, the price is set by the textile companies. This is not just happening in Ireland but all over the world. The textile companies set the price and that is the price they give the farmer. The consolidation is beyond belief when it comes to wool. We are up against a world global market.

To answer the question, I mentioned a scouring plant earlier which the Senator may have missed. If I had €6 million or if the committee decided in the morning to write a blank cheque to build a scouring plant, I would say "Stop". What is going to happen to the wool in the scouring plant after it is cleaned? Where is it going to go? When we have that figured out, when the market is realigned and when we have Irish products containing Irish wool, then we build our scouring plant. To build a scouring plant now, to put all of our Irish wool through it, to clean it and then have it sitting in the yard with nowhere to go would be a disaster. We need to find the markets. Once we have the markets, then build the scouring plant.

I thank Ms Gallagher for coming in. I noted a few things in her submission. She said the Welsh have set up their own system and have their own insulation. Is it competitive? How does it work?

They encouraged the state procurement of Welsh-wool-based insulation. That is as much as I can tell the Deputy. It was a change to procurement policy within legislation. It could have been for semi-state houses, which a Deputy mentioned earlier.

If we became the biggest customer for an insulation company here to switch over to a biofibre, ideally sheep's wool, that would incentivise them to have a line of sheep's wool. As farmers we cannot go out to become insulation manufacturers, but if we incentivise the insulation manufacturers on the island to switch to sheep's wool and the State to be their biggest customer that is when we start to scale up. We have heard so many times about scale. Possibly the reason it is so expensive is it is probably coming from Austria, and they are not turning over enough. However, if state procurement all over the EU, including Ireland, was to say this must come from biofibre being grown in the country of origin, then you now have a customer. Businesses want to make money. I am no fool. I realise that. If you go to Kingspan in Cavan and tell them there is a €6 million contract in State insulation waiting for them, they will be going out shearing the sheep themselves. I do not know how to work it into policy. I do not do policy. I do not know how to look at it, but I definitely think the State could be our first and biggest customer.

Has she looked at the Welsh model? How are they doing it?

All I know is that they did it by incentivising the companies that are doing the manufacturing to use Welsh wool in the insulation. That is much as I can tell the Deputy.

Ms Gallagher is saying not to rush into building a plant to do all the work, but to get a market first. She said earlier that English companies and companies in other places are now vying for wool. Is that fair to say?

They are vying to get the story right back to the farmer.

Are they in competition looking for wool?

The price of British wool has increased substantially in the past 12 months. I would not say there is anybody jumping over ditches trying to get into farms to buy wool, but there is a greater appreciation about the traceability of where the wool comes from.

If there is more in it, has the price gone up?

Yes.

They have found their market in the UK. The Welsh have done their job, and British Wool has put a fair bit of time into it. Ms Gallagher spoke earlier about Portugal. Why have world market prices of wool not gone up?

I believe they are being consolidated and suppressed. The ICSA figures over the past 20 years show a constant increase in the demand for wool and natural fibres. The number of sheep in the world is starting to decline. Wool production has moved substantially away from family farms in Australia and New Zealand and places in northern Europe. There are huge farms growing merino wool in China. They are similar to the beef lots you see in Canada and America. They are now starting to grow their own wool because they realise there is growth in this market.

Is that by having sheep?

Yes, merino sheep. I do not know where the consolidation is coming from. I researched recently that there are only 18 substantial buyers of wool - 18 global players - left. If that number were 28, there would be a lot more competition.

She said there are facilities in the UK. If I brought over fleeces of wool, what does it cost per fleece to clean that wool?

It is expensive depending on where you go. If you go to Bradford there are two types of cleaning. There is cleaning for carpets, which means they extract as much lanolin. That is a lot cheaper. I cannot tell the Deputy. I know that if he contacts any of the spinning mills in Ireland they will be able to give him the exact figure. If you bring it to a micro or macro mill in Cornwall that does beautiful work, it could be anything up to €10 per kg. There are two people in Ireland who have licences to micro clean wool, and they charge €20 per kg to clean that wool. There are two places in Galway with licences to scour, but they are micro plants. In the UK they have started to lean towards these micro processors or micro plants where you have the likes of the Ashtons with their ryelands going from sheep to farm. You have Ériu in County Wicklow. There are probably a dozen of these little industries sprouting up, but it is difficult for them to get going.

My understanding is that there is difficulty here in EPA licensing.

Anybody who got it just did what they had to do. It is not the EPA that is trying to close down the plants. It is what we do with the clean wool once it is clean. Have we a market for it? Do we spend millions on cleaning it and then have it sitting in a shed and no one to buy it from us?

Has anybody done an analysis, in insulation, to see the cost involved when you clean it? How competitive is it?

It is already being done in New Zealand. It is already being manufactured in Austria.

How competitive is it? If I am building 500 houses, I would love to use Irish wool in my insulation.

I bet the Deputy would. I would too.

At the end of the day there is a couple buying that house and it will be down to pounds, shillings and pence. Can anyone tell me what the price is?

No.

There is no difference.

No, there is nobody can tell you. Despite all the hundreds of thousands of euros that are going into academic research, there is nobody who can tell you. There was academic research done showing that we could not justify a scouring plant. The same university then received further academic research to find out what we could do with wool when we had it cleaned. There is no joined-up thinking here. If you come up with an idea that says there is a good chance you can increase the farmgate price of wool if you put €40,000 into the research of such a thing, you will get it quicker than the price of farmgate wool.

My understanding is there was research done for wool for fertiliser and wool in gardens to upgrade drills of spuds or vegetables and keep weeds down.

I thank the Deputy for bringing up that point. There is money going into research to discover if wool can be used as fertiliser when the world over wool is being used as fertiliser. There are fertiliser pellet companies across Europe. There is even Larkfield Pellet Products in Ireland. We know wool can be used.

Fertiliser is a dear commodity, and it is getting dearer. We have looked at all of the different angles. We have looked at it for pellets. We have looked at it for fertiliser. We are looking at it for insulation. I am trying to find a competitive market where we can chip in against anyone who is there and make a good price for the farmer above all, but have it competitive. Is there any way of that happening?

Yes, we just need to tap into the existing textile and heritage market we have on the island. That is one thing we can do. Maybe we can look at public procurement of Irish-based insulation. The reason wool is so expensive is because of the scale. It is not there in scale. It has not been scaled up. To compete with foam, polymers or any kind of synthetic of fossil fuel-based fibre is incredibly difficult. Whether it is hemp or wool it is incredibly difficult.

If you have a mountainy sheep, which is totally different wool, which is the hardest to work on?

For what purpose?

For all the purposes we have talked about.

The mountain sheep wool can be used for absolutely everything. I have already said that there is a mountain sheep wool company called Merrick based in the UK. It is making jumpers from hill sheep wool. It all depends on whether the will, the way, the honesty and integrity are there in the textile manufacturer to want to do it.

I support all of the previous speakers. Sheep is about the only animal I have no experience of. My neighbours had them. I am around long enough to remember the first year I was elected to Laois County Council and they put me on the sheep dipping committee. It was the worst one because I was the youngest and they would give me nothing in politics. I remember being on the committee, and I remember at that time there were between five and seven baths in County Laois. Our job was to inspect the baths. You would see all of the people with their sheep, and they got a tag to say their sheep was dipped because it meant their wool was of better quality. The wool would have a good fleece as the result of dipping the sheep. There were a lot more sheep around me then than there are now, but I had friends who said their father gave them money out of the wool off the sheep. That was part of their payment. There was always remuneration for the wool. It was competitive because I remember people going round buying wool at that time. Like everything else it all slipped and faded away. Nobody had any interest. The baths all closed down and the regulations went away from the local authorities. Now we find ourselves in an appalling situation. People mind their sheep as well as they can. They have a beautiful fleece when it is sold and there is nobody to buy it. It is sad, when Ms Gallagher and others are able to prove that we could use it. She has hit the nail on the head. It needs to be Government driven to say it will be used in the next 5,000 houses that are built.

As Ms Gallagher said, they will all be jumping up then to supply them. We are inundated with people looking to invest in anaerobic digesters. Why are they mushrooming in number? It is because there is a huge grant for them. We could do the same in respect of wool. It is going to take a push like that, or else Ms Gallagher will be back here in 12 months and still nothing will have been done. We have to get the Government to incentivise people by introducing a grant. It has been proven that it is brilliant insulation. If it works, why would we not use it as an Irish product?

Unfortunately, it is not as simple as just washing it and putting it in as insulation. Wool insulation is manufactured in Austria. There is a process involved in ensuring that the wool does not break down or become susceptible to mites at a later stage. It is not as simple as washing, rolling and putting it out. There is a process involved, but there is no reason why we could not do something for the initial manufacturers.

I sometimes scratch my head when it comes to certain things. Why do farmers have to decide on the breed type, keep the animals alive, shear them, present the wool well, try to find a market and then try to find out how to do all of these other things? This is why I said that it is going to take buy-in on the part of other Departments to regulate matters in the context of sheep's wool going to Portugal, Bulgaria or Bradford to be washed. There is so much technology out there that can ensure the wool comes back.

How should the Department of agriculture deal with this matter? We are the agriculture committee. Our job is to listen to Ms Gallagher. We have to go back, feed the information to the Department and try and promote it. How do we do that?

As someone who is presenting to the agriculture committee, if I leave members with one thing it is that it should be certified and made 100% Irish, particularly if we are going to move it on from being the raw material that it is into products such as textiles, insulation, fertilisers or whatever. You can make chairs, couches and benches out of wool. It is a fibre. Anywhere you have polyfibre, you can have biofibre, but we have to certify it.

With all due respect, I have 100 sheep. I shear the sheep and the wool is in the yard. At the moment, it is valueless.

Yes.

There is no point in talking about what Ms Gallagher is referring to. What is going to happen to the wool?

If the wool is not certified, it is going to continue into the global chain it is in at the moment. It is going to continue to have a price that is dictated by someone based on the other side of the world.

How do we change that?

You certify your wool and you clean it and find domestic markets for it.

Who is going to pay to clean it?

On a point of clarification, who is going to certify it? Will it be Bord Bia or some other organisation?

It will be something similar to that, yes. We need to have a task force that will decide on that. It has to be regulated. Otherwise, everyone is going to continue to do what they are doing now, namely claim that they are using Irish wool. The farm-gate price for Irish farmers will not change unless we guarantee that it is Irish wool.

I came in because I wanted to see Ms Gallagher. I recently purchased some Galway Wool. I designed an item of clothing and then knitted and wore it. I have it here. For me, as a hand knitter, this is part of our culture and heritage. This item is 100% Irish wool, which is extremely rare. It is very disappointing to know that it is very rare. I remember years ago, and I am sure a lot of members in this room remember, having to stand while their mothers wound the balls of wool around their arms. That all needs to come back. We are going to lose the skill of hand-knitting. We are going to lose our genuine Irish wool. It needs to be regulated and marked as 100% Irish wool in order that there will be traceability and that people can have garments like the one I knitted.

Where can someone get the wool?

I got it from Galway Wool.

We had to try to process that ourselves. Once we got this back, we knew that the processing here in Ireland and the person processing were not good enough. That was only a pilot scheme. It was funded out of someone's laundry pocket money. That was it. That was literally how it was done. I reiterate that I am a sheep farmer. That is what I do. I just do not see why we, as farmers, have to try and solve this problem. The Department could move a highly certified and very traceable raw material into the marketplace and market it in the same way that we market food. We have no problem marketing food internationally, yet we do not seem to have any interest in marketing this fantastic biofibre that we are producing here. That is the point that I need to leave with members today. If we, as agricultural participants and farmers, can produce a product and if the Department can certify it, that product will sell itself.

This is an issue that warrants further discussion. The point about labelling and traceability is an issue we have identified. It will be put on our agenda for the spring. We will come back to the topic. On behalf of the committee, I thank Ms Gallagher for her invaluable contribution and for the wide-ranging information she provided.

I am conscious that this is the final meeting of the committee prior to the Christmas break. I thank the members for their contributions and co-operation throughout the year. I also thank them for bring forward topics, raising issues and putting together the plan for next year. I thank all the witnesses who participated during the year. I thank the staff who facilitated our meetings, carried out research, prepared documentation and did so much more. I thank the members of the media for their coverage of the committee's proceedings and the people who are watching in for their engagement. Tá mé an-bhuíoch le gach duine a ghlac páirt i rith na bliana, go háirithe na baill, an fhoireann anseo, an pobal sa bhaile, na meáin agus gach éinne a ghlac páirt i ngnó an choiste.

Today, there are two important birthdays at home, namely those of my son Andy and my daughter Aobha. Lá breithe shona daoibh a Andy agus Aobha, agus dá máthair, dar ndóigh.

I thank everyone for their participation and wish them a happy Christmas. Nollaig shona daoibh go léir.