Agriculture Industry
Dail Éireann — 2025-10-14
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Martin Kenny (SF), Sligo-Leitrim

As I said, we are all conscious of this issue. At the moment, I think 4.3% of farmers are aged under 35. The average age is 60 in Irish agriculture, so there is a clear problem here. It has often been the case that the people who take over the farm subsequently go off and get a job, work away from the farm for a while and then maybe come back in mid-life and take over the farm. That has been the tradition. The type of agriculture we are doing in this country now means this may no longer be the appropriate methodology to use. We need to get people into farming earlier so they can build a career and build up the farm from an earlier stage in their lives. Of course, there are a whole lot of competing factors. We have a very buoyant economy. People have opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry and all sorts of other industries, where many would think they would have an easier life than in farming. That possibility is competing with farming. Central to all of this, we need to ensure that this report on generational renewal and its recommendations are implemented. When will this report be implemented? When will it actually happen? We have the report and the recommendations, but when will we have the action?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-10-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-14