Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 5 Dec 2000

Vol. 527 No. 3

Written Answers. - Agricultural Training.

Denis Naughten

Ceist:

72 Mr. Naughten asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development the discussions he has had with Teagasc in relation to the retraining and up-skilling of farmers to enable them to take up off-farm employment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26660/00]

Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development (Mr. Walsh)

In general, Teagasc training courses are aimed at farmers and horticulturists to upskill people for employment in farming, horticulture or agribusiness.

However, some of the longer courses for new entrants, namely, the one year courses in colleges and the certificates in farming and in rural enterprise at local training centres, contain modules which provide students with skills which would equip them for off-farm employment. These include modules on information technology, buildings and maintenance and in many cases are delivered in association with FÁS and vocational education committees.

Teagasc also run courses in rural business development – mainly in rural tourism and home food production – to equip rural people to develop these enterprises at home. It runs some of these courses with assistance from the vocational education committees, institutes of technology and CERT.

Teagasc is currently running a large number of short courses on information technology, mainly computer use and computer applications. While these are primarily to equip people to run farm computers, they will form a basis for some participants to seek off-farm employment.

The proposed rural viability advisory service will offer farm families an "options analysis" where all the options – including on-farm developments and off-farm employment – will be examined. When off-farm employment is identified as a desirable and feasible option and a training need results, Teagasc will either provide the training or refer the family member to the appropriate training agency, for example, FÁS, CERT or VEC.