I will deal with the comments as raised, if that is all right. Deputy Doyle raised a number of points that also were picked up by other members. A significant number of the 340 advisers who were employed in 2008 were involved in REPS planning and as the REP scheme is being wound down, I would distinguish that work from the traditional work of advisers. It is important to make that point and to put it in context. I greatly regret that Teagasc was obliged to let go a number of good and dynamic young REPS planners, but this is something to be borne in mind in respect of the workload.
Deputies Doyle and Aylward picked up on the question as to the optimum number of advisers. The concern of Teagasc is that a policy driven by the moratorium and retirement is a policy of drift because one will run to stand still. There would be merit in looking first and foremost at the politically determined need for the service. The political system must decide what is wanted or required from the service and then, having done that, the resources that are needed and the efficiencies that are required would follow from it. It is very difficult to answer the question as to the optimal number of advisers unless one has a clearly articulated view on the level and nature of the service needed. Such a dialogue would be highly useful because it may well lead to an outcome like that suggested by Deputy Aylward of agreeing that the numbers cannot fall below a certain critical level if there is a commitment to deliver on a certain level of service. I perceive the numbers issue as being important but subsidiary to the most important question, which the type of service sought.
Deputy Sherlock raised the issue of the privatised model. We have enough experience from the UK to know that its decision to go private was a disaster, which is well appreciated by all commentators in the UK. We are fortunate in Teagasc in that in recent years we were able to recruit those who came from that service. We have first-hand knowledge of what happened there. The privatised service fulfils a niche requirement but is a very different type of service.
Typically, one will see the private service engaged in activities such as advice on tax and planning permission, which have very little to do with advising farmers on technology or giving them independent advice. I agree with Deputy O'Keeffe that the value of the service has been the fact that we tried to maintain independence continuously. Farmers have been bombarded on every side on the merits of particular products and so forth and appreciate independent advice.
An area which has proved to be very important in recent years is the environment. Advisers are appreciated for the technical and complex advice they give in that area, which is becoming more complex. In regard to the private model, we have to be sensible and see that there are opportunities for public private partnerships. There are certain tasks the private sector is better able to do and tasks it will not do. Determining the overall level of service requires that some relationship be identified whereby we could work in harmony with the private sector.
Deputy O'Keeffe raised these matters with me before in regard to research and I am very familiar with them. I appreciate his strong support for the advisory service and I agree with everything he said. I disagree with him completely, which will not come as a surprise to him, in regard to his comments on research. I wrote a book on the returns to research. Of all of the investment in the knowledge economy, there has been more written and published on the quantifiable returns on research than on any other area. I can give the Deputy countless examples of research on agriculture and food. Overall, the payback in terms of an internal rate of return which is published in peer-reviewed journals is 44%, which has been verified by scientific studies. Within Teagasc we identified several areas. The most recent, which has gone under the radar, are the benefits from genomic selection. We were the second country in the world to introduce it in dairy cows. The cost of the research, in conjunction with our colleagues in ICBF, was approximately €1 million. We estimate the payback to be in the order of €8 million for the dairy sector and if that was extended into beef, as it is hoped it will be over the next few years, the payback could be tripled.
Another very good example of payback is the work we have done on potato breeding. It is a very real return because it depends on the royalties we generate from the sale of potato varieties. The Chairman and committee will be aware of the varieties that have been produced at Oak Park by Harry Keogh, who has now retired, and his colleagues. The Rooster brand is the most significant and the Cara is another. All of those continue to generate royalty streams and the payback is evident.
Other examples of the work done in Oak Park is the sowing date of spring barley, where we identified substantial gains in yields by bringing forward the sowing dates. Examples from Moorepark of work done on milking machine liners showed benefits not alone in terms of mastitis reduction but in terms of milk yield. I could go on and on.
Food is an interesting issue. Deputy O'Keeffe will be aware that recently we had the very welcome announcement of the Danone investment in Macroom in infant food formula. I extend an invitation to all members of the committee to visit Moorepark because it has state-of-the-art facilities in regard to infant milk formula. Ireland is currently exporting 16% of the world requirements and Moorepark research is playing a very important role in production and technology. We were involved in the background with Enterprise Ireland for more than a year promoting Macroom. I would like to think we played a significant part in persuading Danone that we had the technological capability to support not just it but more importantly Irish dairy companies such as Dairygold and others which supply ingredients.
I may seem to be biased towards Cork but the best example I could get, which is not the only one, of where our food research has delivered real dividends is our involvement with the Carbery Group. The classic Dubliner cheese product was developed by Moorepark scientists in collaboration with others. There are several other examples. As far as I am concerned there is evidence of payback, which is not just idle talk on my part. The evidence is backed up by peer review journals.
Equally complimentary to research are advisory services, and we have done the same level of analysis. My colleague, Dr. Hennessy, has examined the impact farmers get from contact with the advisory service and we can demonstrate the payback. We track it continuously in our surveys. We investigate and correlate the income generated on farms with farmers that are involved with advisory services.
Discussion groups were mentioned. We have 6,000 farmers involved in dairy discussion groups, which is a phenomenal number. Many have come in under the new scheme. We have examined the benefits farmers get from discussion groups. Dr. Hennessy quantified it in euro at a recent dairy conference and there is a real benefit.
Will the committee to consider what has happened this year, which was the first year of the scheme. The number of dairy farmers - I can refer to my area of the country which is a very difficult dairy farming area - who became involved in discussion groups started taking on technology that they would never previously have considered. One very good development concerns the re-seeding of grasslands. It was a good year, which I accept, but I have no doubt it was influenced in part by the involvement of discussion groups and the role of Teagasc in that respect.
Deputy Coonan raised important issues in regard to the Teagasc educational service and referred specifically to Gurteen College. I probably had representations from the people who contacted the Deputy in regard to admission to the college this year. There was excess demand for places and I regret very much that we had to turn down 250 applicants, which is something we never had to do before, purely because we did not have the teaching staff to accommodate the students. The reason is very simple; it is not a policy of Teagasc, rather, it is the moratorium. We cannot recruit staff.
Even if we could create the resources to recruit staff it is still not the issue. In other words, if we identified other savings, which we continue to do throughout the organisation, we cannot use those resources to recruit teachers or other advisers. That is the impact of the moratorium and is something I emphasise. If we were to get external funding for teachers from a generous co-operative or company which said it wanted to support a particular college and subvent a number of teachers we would not able to recruit staff under the moratorium.
Private colleges are in a particularly difficult situation, something which I discussed previously at the committee. Most of the teachers that work in those colleges are not Teagasc staff, that is, public employees. They are employees of the private institutions that own the colleges. They are subvented by Teagasc and their pensions come out of the Teagasc grant in aid. Therefore, we cannot require them to move location or change role, as we can with our staff. They have a particular difficulty which is compounded by the fact that if a college such as Mountbellew loses teachers through early retirement, illness, maternity leave or whatever, we cannot hire a teacher.
It is also very difficult for us to transfer staff from the advisory service into those colleges because it takes away from the service. It also creates complications that could arise subsequently in regard to the so-called transfer of undertaking legislation. We have been strongly supported by the Department in these difficult situations. Yesterday's outcome in regard to our budget is recognition of the contribution Teagasc has made and is making. The biggest difficulty we are facing is in dealing with the moratorium on recruitment. I am not for a minute suggesting that, in the current circumstances, that can be fundamentally changed - and I would not argue for that - but there is a big difference in an organisation which depends on specialists to deliver a service and an organisation whose dependency is on general staff or administrators who can be more flexibly moved around the system. For example, last year we lost our plant pathologist through retirement. One cannot say to somebody else that he or she should become a plant pathologist - no matter how good a researcher he may be. If one does not have a plant pathologist, one cannot have an effective advisory service on cereals either.
