We will support the Order of Business.

Today, I want to speak for a moment about a meeting that I had in my office with members of Wexford Macra na Feirme on their concerns about generational renewal. They gave me some fairly startling statistics. At present one in three farmers across the country is aged over 65 while only one in 20 farmers is aged under 35. That is something that all of us in this House have to take stock of. Why is it the case at present that we have such a high average age for our farmers? It is currently 59. Last year, at the ploughing championships, the commission on generational renewal outlined 31 recommendations on what the Government, and I suppose all of us in this House could do, about generational renewal. The Wexford members of Macra made a clear pitch to me and said that without new young farmers joining the industry and getting involved, we simply will not have the food that the country requires into the future. They put it in stark terms because this is a serious problem that is coming down the tracks.

In my own case, both my father and my uncle farm. There is me and I have two brothers. While we regularly help out, none of us is a full-time farmer. That is something that is found in so many families up and down the country at present.

The Wexford members of Macra spoke to me about how important schemes such as the targeted agriculture modernisation schemes are and how important the exemptions that exist for stamp duty on the transfer of farms from one generation to the next are. A key point that they made to me is that the farmer who retires has to be supported as well and that changes being proposed at European level, which would remove the entitlement of a farmer to a pension if he was in receipt of a single farm payment while providing no retirement scheme while providing no retirement scheme, are simply not workable.

I urge that we have a debate in this House with the Minister for agriculture on generational renewal in farming, and that we hear directly how the 31 recommendations in the generational renewal report are progressing and perhaps seek an update on the measures that will be brought forward in the budget specifically around encouraging more young people into farming.