Ear to the Ground - Winter 2014

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ANNUAL 2015

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How the year unfolded – and what’s to come in 2015 PLUS...

15

WILDLIFE ✱ LAW ✱ ARCHAEOLOGY ✱ FASHION ✱ HANDBALL ✱ MOTORING ✱ FARM SAFETY ✱ CURRACHS ✱ SPECIAL OLYMPICS ✱ GENETICS ✱ ZURICH FARM INSURANCE

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WELCOME

Editor: Ruraidh Conlon O’Reilly Deputy Editor: Conor Forrest Editorial Staff: Louise Donnery, Valerie Jordan, Aoife Loy, Rachel Murray Contributors: John Bradley, Paula Kerrigan, Ian Maleney, Darragh McCullough, Aisling Meehan, Christine Murray, Derek Owens, Dean Van Nguyen Design: Jane Matthews, Antoinette Sinclair Advertising Designers: Alan McArthur, Jennifer Reid, Colm McDermott Photography: Jason Clarke, Roger Jones, Kenneth O’Halloran, Colm McDermott, StockFood, Thinkstock Production Manager: Mary Connaughton Production: Nicole Ennis Sales Director: Paul Clemenson Managing Director: Diarmaid Lennon Ashville Media Group, Old Stone Building Blackhall Green, Dublin 7 Tel: (01) 432 2200 Email: eartotheground@ashvillemediagroup.com All rights reserved. Every care has been taken to ensure that the information contained in this magazine is accurate.

The publishers cannot, however, accept responsibility for errors or omissions.

Reproduction by any means in whole or in part without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. © Ashville Media Group 2014.

ISSN 2009-4310

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Hello ... ...and welcome to our winter issue of Ear to the Ground magazine, which we hope is the perfect companion to the series that continues on Thursday nights on RTÉ One at 8.30pm.

It’s been a dramatic year for farming, and who better to tell the story than our own Darragh McCullough. After beef blockades, incredible growing weather and a record superlevy fine, he takes a punt on what’s to come in 2015, when the milk quota will be a thing of the past for the first time in a generation.

Meanwhile, rural decline and renewal are hot topics these days, with little evidence of economic recovery to be seen outside of Dublin. Ian Maleney and Aoife Loy point to some good examples like Lough Boora Parklands or The Cottage in Loughmore, while Ruraidh Conlon O’Reilly interviews new Minister for Rural Affairs Ann Phelan.

Mairead McGuinness MEP tackles the vexed topic of climate change and the challenge for agriculture. We also take a close look at wildlife, as Valerie Jordan and Paula Kerrigan meet creatures such as the Irish stoat, pine marten and the threatened bee, so important in our ecosystem.

Finally, food lovers are in for a treat with plenty of tasty recipes and stories from our world-class food producers: it’s all about food, after all, and let’s hope the coming year is a good one for those who bring it to our tables.

Wishing you a happy and prosperous 2015.

ANNUAL 2015

FEAST OF FOOD

DELICIOUS RECIPES, ARTISAN EXPERTS

EAR TO THE GROUND ANNUAL 2015

Milk Quota

Rural Renewal

READY, SET, GONE

WHAT’S THE WAY FORWARD?

John Cummins Darragh’s Diary

Executive Producer Independent Pictures

How the year unfolded – and what’s to come in 2015 PLUS...

15

WILDLIFE ✱ LAW ✱ ARCHAEOLOGY ✱ FASHION ✱ HANDBALL ✱ MOTORING ✱ FARM SAFETY ✱ CURRACHS ✱ SPECIAL OLYMPICS ✱ GENETICS ✱ ZURICH FARM INSURANCE

15 €4.95

9 772009 431000 9 772009 431000

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ON THE COVER Photography: Jason Clarke Make-up: Mary Ellen Darby Location: Kilruderry House, Co Wicklow

EAR TO THE GROUND 5

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178 DESIGNS ON 2015

Contents FEATURES 8

18

45 49 PROUD SPONSOR OF EAR TO THE GROUND MAGAZINE

DARRAGH’S DIARY Presenter Darragh McCullough reviews 2014 – and gives a few predictions for the year to come.

MAIREAD MCGUINNESS The MEP and former Ear to the Ground presenter on climate change and agriculture.

AN IRISH GENIUS The life of tractor pioneer Harry Ferguson, remembered by enthusiasts.

SUCCESSION AND TAX Agricultural solicitor Aisling Meehan explains the ins and outs.

52 57 61 69 72

CREDIT UNIONS Dean Van Nguyen finds out the state of play.

BEES Boosting the pollinator population for a healthier ecosystem.

FARM SAFETY After a bad year, crisis point again.

TEAGASC TROUBLE Recruitment ban bites.

RURAL LIFE AND HAPPINESS Why Conor Forrest chooses country over city.

RURAL RENEWAL

23

30

32

36

MEET THE MINISTER Ruraidh Conlon O’Reilly talks to Ann Phelan, Ireland’s first Minister for Rural Affairs.

LOUGHMORE How a co-operative shop revitalised the local village.

LOUGH BOORA PARKLANDS Ian Maleney visits a Co Offaly bog-turnednature resort.

LOCAL ART CENTRES Many were built during the boom – can they survive?

6 EAR TO THE GROUND

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CONTENTS

148

118

FOOD REBELS BIRDWATCHING

8

119

DARRAGH’S DIARY

IRELAND’S MOST UNIQUE FARM?

BUSINESS

90

76 BUSINESS NEWS 78 MILK QUOTA So long, farewell.

82 FARM GENETICS A beginner’s guide, by Dr John Bradley.

87 GM POTATOES Teagasc research underway.

90 ARCHAEOLOGY Back in business, having gone from boom to bust. Ian Maleney reports.

94 LONGEVITY How longer lifespans affect the farm of the future. By Christine Murray.

101 CHRISTMAS TREES A not-soseasonal industry in Ireland.

105 THIRD-LEVEL EDUCATION The options.

107 BEEF FARM TECHNOLOGY Innovations.

112 FORESTRY Preserving Ireland’s ancient trees.

129 ZURICH FARM INSURANCE Michael Doyle on a positive year and how farmers can reduce risk.

FOOD AND LIFESTYLE 119 LAMBAY ISLAND A unique farm off the coast of Dublin.

125 SPECIAL OLYMPICS Hero Joe Kelly.

133 GLUTEN FREE New Glanbia oat mill.

136 BOYNE CURRACHS Valerie Jordan finds out about a fascinating traditional boatbuilding craft.

141 PINE MARTENS The red squirrel’s best friend.

148 THE HAPPY PEAR The brothers plot their food and health revolution in Greystones.

155 GUARANTEED IRISH The story behind the label.

159 ARTISAN FOODS Craft and innovation in Ireland.

164 HOT POT RECIPES Delicious winter dinners.

170 UNCLE AIDAN’S FLOUR Restoring a traditional mill.

176 IRISH STOAT Help find out about this elusive creature.

178 DESIGN 2015 Valerie Jordan previews a year of great design.

190 HANDBALL ALLEY PHOTOGRAPHY A fascinating project by Kenneth O’Halloran.

196 GIFT GUIDE Winter treats, compiled by Rachel Murray and Colm McDermott.

204 MOTORING The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and Jeep Cherokee under Conor Forrest’s right boot.

208 MASSEY FERGUSON RECORD Broken in Donegal.

DIGGING DEEP

141 23

PINE MARTENS

RURAL RENEWAL: MEET THE MINISTER EAR TO THE GROUND 7

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DARRAGH’S DIARY

Year To The Ground DARRAGH LOOKS BACK AND FORWARD The perfect combination of weather conditions made for a bumper 2014 harvest

“The cobs were like winebottles! We got the perfect mix of rain and sunshine that I’ve never seen the likes of before.”

WEATHER...

When normally reticent farmers gush about something, you know that there has to be good reason. So the glowing terms that they used to describe 2014 are not to be taken lightly, especially when there are few factors that ever play as big a role in farming fortunes as the weather. In contrast with the first half of 2013, when a fodder crisis claimed the lives of over 100,000

farm animals through malnutrition, 2014 was a gift of a year. While good crops were eventually saved in the latter part of 2013, they didn’t compare with the record yields and quality that fell into farmers’ laps in 2014. “The cobs were like wine-bottles!” was how one Kilkenny dairy farmer memorably described the bumper maize crop that was

8 EAR TO THE GROUND

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DARRAGH’S DIARY

Decent weather, beef blockades, a huge dairy season – 2014 was a good year for many Irish farmers, and an exciting one for Ear To The Ground’s Darragh McCullough. He looks back at the year that was, and gives a few predictions for 2015. Photos: Roger Jones.

standing in his fields by the end of September.

Despite a late sowing of the crop for many farmers, it grew to an unprecedented 10ft high. “It just took off like a rocket when it was planted, and never stopped. We got the perfect mix of rain and sunshine that I’ve never seen the likes of before,” said maize expert John Foley. It was the same for

every crop from potatoes to pumpkins. Crucially, from Ireland’s point of view, it was also a record year for our biggest and most important crop – grass. “Yields were up 15-20 per cent, on 2013, which is a massive increase and boost to the farmer’s bottom-line,” said Teagasc’s Head of Livestock Research, Padraig French.

The EU wants to fine Ireland over €100m because audits found that farmers were over-claiming on their Single Farm Applications. In some cases auditors found that farmers were claiming on sites that had since been built on. The level of fine that will eventually be paid by the Irish Government is still being negotiated by Department of Agriculture officials. Only after that has been decided will we find out just how the department plans to claw back the monies from farmers.

EAR TO THE GROUND 9

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DARRAGH’S DIARY

Record grass growth meant an overproduction of milk – and an EU superlevy fine

...WHICH LED TO THE BIGGEST SUPERLEVY BILL EVER Record grass growth and perfect grazing conditions put the tin hat on a season that was always going to be a challenge from a milk quota point of view. Dairy farmers have been holding their breath for the last 12 months as they wait for the first opportunity to expand their production in over 30 years when EU-controlled milk quotas end next April. They know they can produce milk as cheaply as anywhere else in the world. But nature being nature, the practicalities of being able to turn on the tap on April 1st make sticking to the archaic limits imposed in 1983 impossible for many. Extra stock has been built up over the last two years, and some of these have already begun to produce milk. Add in the lure for extra output that record prices created and you begin to understand why the country’s dairy farmers could be facing fines for over production from the EU of over €20m next year.

...AND BEEF BLOCKADES ARE BACK Beef prices fell by somewhere between 10-15 per cent in 2014, which may not sound like a huge amount – but in the razor-thin margins of the beef industry it was enough to bring furious farmers out in their thousands to blockade the meat factories for the first time in over a decade.

The processors claimed that they were doing their best but that prices had risen to such highs in 2013 that it had effectively ‘burned off’ demand from consumers who decided to switch to cheaper alternatives such as pork and chicken.

The fact that our biggest customers for beef, the British supermarket chains, tightened up their supply chains following the horsemeat scandal didn’t help and Irish beef producers were appalled as they watched a gap of over €300/ head open up between returns to the British

farmer and their Irish counterparts. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the tightening of the ‘specs’ demanded by the meat factories.

Farmers felt that moving these goal-posts made the likelihood of them ever retaining a profit from their work an impossibility. A series of so-called round-table discussions were convened by the Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, but farmers lost patience and began a series of pickets. As always is the case in these disputes, both parties eventually reached a compromise of sorts where the farmers resumed business as usual and the processors promised better prices. But it’s an uneasy settlement, with farmers still feeling like they are getting a raw deal, especially with the ever-increasing market options that were opening up for the sector.

THE COMMODITY BOOM IS OVER… Those record milk prices were the tail-end of a commodity boom that saw farmers receive record prices for everything from potatoes to beef in the previous 12 months.

It was a function of China’s ever-increasing appetite for western foods such as dairy and beef, combined with poor weather conditions in various parts of the world that curtailed output. But as the saying in the industry goes, there’s no cure for high prices quite like high prices. In other words, when farmers see extra profit to be made by increasing output, the surge in supplies eventually makes its way through the system, and a record-size global grain harvest in 2014 saw grain prices crash.

Simultaneously, China’s demand began to cool and bans in Russian resulted in lower milk prices. But the real flash-point during 2014 was the collapse in beef prices...

Preliminary research from the ICBF shows that every breed is able to produce as tender meat as the next – not good news for those breeds that justify their existence on the basis of their superior tenderness, but excellent news for the huge majority of stock that come off the dairy

Teagasc launched a new potato variety called Bikini, due to its spotty skin colouration. It is a first cousin

here. Expect plenty of passionate rows on this

of Rooster, but it will take a lot more than novel skin colours to knock the dominant Rooster off its

before any official results are accepted.

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10 EAR TO THE GROUND

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DARRAGH’S DIARY THE RUSSIAN BAN BITES Mr Putin decided in the summer to show the EU what side their bread was buttered on by banning EU imports. It was retaliation for the EU’s sanctions imposed following Russia’s incursions in both the Crimea and Ukraine. Unfortunately from an Irish perspective, we are one of the main exporters of both cheese and butter out of the EU. Since then, farmers have seen their milk price slashed by nearly 20 per cent. The Irish Dairy Board, which had invested millions in building up outlets and a sales team in Moscow, has decided to try to tough out the next 12 months by keeping staff on the ground in the hope that they are first out of the blocks if and when the ban is lifted. Beef and pork are also in limbo, although the volumes are smaller and of lower quality. Meanwhile, the ‘backwash’ of product from other EU countries that were even more reliant on Russia hangs over the fresh produce market. As farm supports are pared back, it’s incidents like this that reinforce for farmers just how scary market volatility can be.

After a series of embarrassing judgements and out-of-court settlements, the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) were officially disbanded, although the jury is still out on whether this as simply a rebranding exercise, as another group of officials have effectively been put in place to do the same job.

“In the razor-thin margins of the beef industry it was enough to bring furious farmers out in their thousands to blockade the meat factories for the first time in over a decade.”

CAP DEAL DONE Minister Coveney’s crowning achievement in his own mind for 2014 may well be the inking of the latest reform of the €55bn CAP budget for another six years. The Corkman and his officials were tasked with the pretty onerous job of securing agreement not only between 27 different member states each looking for exceptions and exclusions to the myriad of rules, but also from the 760-odd MEPs and the Commission itself. In typical fashion it came down to the wire, but Minister Coveney managed to get agreement at the 11th hour.

It was partly successful due to the amount of flexibility that was built into the deal for each state. However, this meant that some of the most heated exchanges between farmers and the minister only got going when he started to iron out the fine detail of the deal when he got back home. Smaller farmers in the west suddenly realised that they had lost out on the degree of

redistribution that had originally been proposed by the reform architect, Romanian Commissioner Dacian Ciolos. Details of how new environmental ‘greening’ measures, along with the nitty-gritty of new environmental GLAS schemes are going to work for farmers on commonages in the west, are still to be ironed out.

A change in food retailing rules in Belgium allowed big retailers like Delhaise to start selling food products made out of insects.

While bug burgers are not likely to be a big hit for many western consumers, insects are a regular part of the staple diet in other countries, and organisations such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation are convinced that insect protein offers one of the most sustainable solutions to satisfying the world’s growing appetite for protein in the future.

A CHANGING OF THE GUARD While Simon Coveney may have been disappointed that he didn’t get a promotion during the reshuffle, the allocation of defence to his existing ag and marine brief gave wags a field day for puns on the minister’s new dual role – such as the Minister for Tanks and Tractors, Bulls and Bullets, and so on. However, Ireland did secure a green jersey in the very significant agriculture commissioner post in the new EU cabinet. Phil Hogan is also joined by a new face in the IFA office in Brussels. Bord Bia’s Liam McHale took up the role vacated by Michael Treacy after close to 30 years in the role. Indeed, another pivotal role being freed up this year, after more than a decade in the experienced hands of Tom Moran, is the position of secretary general in the Department of Agriculture. And last but not least, let’s not forget the unveiling of George Lee as RTÉ’s new agriculture and environment correspondent.

12 EAR TO THE GROUND

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DARRAGH’S DIARY

It was a bad year for safety on the farm, and initiatives such as Embrace tried to raise awareness

FARM SAFETY BECOMES A BIGGER ISSUE THAN EVER With a death toll expected to be around the 25mark as Ear To The Ground went to press, farming was hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons on an all-too-regular basis during 2014.

The spike in farm fatalities brought on a surge of new initiatives, including a new advocacy group called Embrace, a raft of new grant aid measures specifically targeting farm safety, and a number of new high-profile ad campaigns. However, there is a suspicion within the sector that until inadequate farm safety prevention measures actually hit farmers where it hurts – i.e. in their wallets – there is unlikely to be massive change in the overall statistics.

Another huge delegation of the who’s who in the Irish food industry headed for China in November with one purpose: to sell the still growing 1.35bn Chinese population more food. The trip yielded plaudits for Minister Coveney, as he secured commitments from the Chinese to enter the final phase of clearing Irish beef for entry there after a 14 year-long BSE ban. A lot has changed in those 14 years, with the Chinese developing a voracious taste for beef and dairy, particularly imported products. Irish beef also arrived on the shelves of US supermarkets shelves just before Christmas, following the re-opening of that market in 2014.

2015: OLD MCCULLOUGH’S ALMANAC In a nutshell, 2015 looks like it’s going to be the year that the party ends for dairy farmers – while beef farmers look set to see a bounce in prices.

Given the optimism around the removal of the milk quota in April 2015, why the gloomy outlook? Producing extra milk when prices are tanking internationally is not a recipe for success.

And all the signs are that milk prices are going to continue at weak levels for the first half of 2015.

Although global demand for dairy products continues to grow at 2 per cent annually, a hesitant China and a bulge of 4 per cent growth in world supplies in 2014 have conspired to halve dairy prices on global markets.

Ireland has been buffered from the worst so far, but Teagasc’s economic forecasting unit in Athenry suggests that prices will fall a whopping 20-30 per cent in 2015 on the 37c/l average received last year. That will bring down prices to 26-30c/l, a drop that hasn’t been experienced since 2009. That time, prices dropped to a crucifying 21c/l and dairy farmers ended up running up huge bank overdrafts and credit bills with their feed merchants.

Fortunes for beef farmers should swing the other way. After a year in which prices fell by 10-12 per cent, all the indications are that there will be 150,000 fewer cattle in the system next year. That will bring prices back up, but there will be no bonanza because the EU farm subsidies that beef farmers rely so heavily on – with up to 100 per cent of their income derived from the

cheque in the post – will be reduced this year.

All farmers will also be hoping that the recent reversal in input cost growth continues. Feed prices fell by 8 per cent in 2014, and fuel could fall significantly if recent falls in crude oil prices get passed down the line. Cheaper fuel also means cheaper fertilizer, with so much of the cost of nitrogen dependent on the input cost of oil and gas. These are all key inputs for every enterprise, from tomato growing to sheep farming.

There are a couple of factors that could make all of these predictions totally redundant. We already know how big a role the weather plays, and everybody will be banking on avoiding a repeat of the atrocious conditions in 2012 and 2013. However, it is an ill-wind that blows no good, and catastrophic weather events in other key food production regions of the world often create huge price lifts for Irish farmers. Potato farmers got record prices for their spuds two years ago because there was a shortage of the crop in Europe. The previous year, an unusually harsh year in Russia provided a perfect export opportunity for the crop. The same potato growers badly need some opportunity as a bumper crop in 2014 has left prices on the floor.

Geopolitics can also play an important role.

We’ve seen how Russia’s ban on EU food imports has undermined dairy prices but it could swing the other way just as quickly, depending on what humour Mr Putin finds himself in during 2015.

Maybe a little postcard from the Ear to the Ground crew would cheer him up!

14 EAR TO THE GROUND

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● Every year the fire service attends fires on farms, most commonly hay barn fires. It is in every farmer’s interest to: ● Maintain firefighting equipment and check that it is in good order. ● Prepare a fire routine and action plan. Make sure all farm workers know what to do. ● Ensure farm staff know of access to nearby water supplies. This will be invaluable to the fire brigade.

● Call 112 or 999 without delay. ● Speak calmly and clearly. Only hang up when the operator tells you. ● Don’t fight the fire unless safe to do so. ● Send someone to the farm entrance to direct the fire brigade to the fire. ● Prepare to evacuate livestock should the fire spread. ● Prepare to use farm machinery to assist the fire brigade under their supervision.

CHECK ● Electrical wiring should be checked regularly by a competent person to avoid overheating or arcing of connections in hay barns. ● Electric fences should not be located near the storage of hay/straw. Arcing may occur when wires touch off objects. ● Avoid using machinery in or near hay barns – exhaust sparks may be released into the stored fodder.

EAR TO THE GROUND 17

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POLITICS

Agriculture & TALK AND ACTION IN EUROPE

Talk of the weather is never far from farmers’ lips, but into the future climate will dominate conversations across the community as the world tackles climate change and agriculture is asked to play its part, writes Mairead McGuinness MEP and Vice-President of the European Parliament.

A

griculture, forestry and land use are responsible for 24 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), second only to the energy sector, which accounts for 35 per cent of emissions linked to climate change.

The good news is that emissions from agriculture, forestry and land use are under control according to Dr Rajebdra Pachauri, chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has just issued its fifth assessment of the state of global climate change. However, this does not mean that agriculture and land use will be exempted from actions to address climate change.

We know from the IPCC report that climate change is real and actions are urgently needed to tackle it. But it’s not

all doom and gloom. The scientists believe we can address the threat of rising global temperatures – provided we do the right things now.

The IPCC pulls together the scientific information and proposes options for policy makers. It does not prescribe what countries should do, but rather proposes what measures would work.

Among the things that the IPCC believes can be done immediately are: improving energy efficiency, increasing the share of renewable energy and, controversially, a role for nuclear power.

When it comes to land use, the IPCC stresses the importance of preventing deforestation and urges significant reforestation of lands. Currently only 11 per cent of land in Ireland is planted.

Climate change impacts on all sectors of the economy. The issue of agriculture

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& Climate

and food production is complicated by the need for land use to produce food, while acknowledging that food production involves the emission of harmful greenhouse gases.

A CALM APPROACH Dr Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, came to the European Parliament recently and while he spoke of the dangers of climate change and the need for action, his speech was calm and considered.

He did not scaremonger, nor did he flinch from the central message that unless we take action to de-carbonise our economies we will see more frequent and dangerous weather events. We could also risk seeing a reduction in global crop yields and a threat to global food security.

The mention of climate change tends to draw both positive and negative reactions.

For farmers, there is sometimes a sense that actions to mitigate climate change are harmful to agriculture output.

The fact that a significant 24 per cent of emissions come from the sector lead some to fear that too much will be asked of farming to cut emissions and this might be difficult.

For some non-governmental organisations (NGOs), too little is being demanded and they see the need for significant changes in agriculture and food production to address the climate challenge, including more sustainable consumption patterns among citizens including changing our dietary habits, i.e. what we actually eat.

Already, the new CAP includes, for the first time, an environmental link in the single farm payment. The demands being made of farmers in order for them to

get the full single farm payment include crop diversification, ecological focus areas and maintaining permanent pastures. All of these come from the concerns about climate change and the spin-off impact on loss of biodiversity from the countryside.

These new measures are already causing headaches for some tillage farmers, where the brunt of the impact will fall. Providing â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;space for natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; or ecological focus areas is, in theory, a good idea. However, in practice many farmers regard it as an unwelcome and prescriptive imposition on their farming systems.

These new greening measures are here to stay, at least until 2017 when a review of the impact of the measures on biodiversity will be undertaken.

This will be among the many challenges facing the new EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Phil EAR TO THE GROUND 19

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AN ETERNAL OPTIMIST ABOVE: Mairead McGuinness MEP, VicePresident of the European Parliament with Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the European Parliament recently. Dr Pachauri has chaired the IPCC since 2002. He is a leader in the global climate policy debate and played a major role in laying the groundwork for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. He accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 on behalf of the IPCC. He knows the science behind climate change and collaborates with hundreds of other scientists to pull together the best available knowledge on the topic.

Despite his knowledge of the dangers of climate change, he is far from gloomy about the future, describing himself as an eternal optimist and stressing his belief that when societies fully understand the consequences of climate change there will be decisive and effective action to tackle it. He likened the current debate to that of the pollution of European rivers and waterways in the late 1970s: actions were eventually taken by policy makers, resulting in a major improvement in water quality.

Hogan. He will be under pressure from farmers to reduce the impact of the socalled greening of the CAP, while on the other hand he will be under pressure from several environmental NGOs to leave the measures in place and indeed to bring forward further environmental measures.

Commissioner Hogan will also be under pressure to protect the agriculture budget over the coming five years. With severe pressure on the EU’s finances, many look to the agriculture budget with envy and wish to take a slice off it for other uses.

In recent times efforts have been made to divert funds for agriculture towards fighting the dreaded Ebola outbreak in west Africa. The need for such funding is clear and urgent but raiding the agriculture budget is a concern, particularity when market volatility is increasing.

EXPANDING PRODUCTION One of the big issues for Ireland is our plans to expand agriculture production and how this might impact on our overall emission levels.

It is a debate that took place among heads of state and governments of the EU in October at the Council meeting.

For the first time, recognition has been given to the important role of agriculture in producing food and the difficulties the sector faces in mitigating those emissions.

The European Council of EU leaders agreed that the multiple objectives of

the agriculture and land use sectors, with their lower mitigation potential, should be acknowledged as well as the need to ensure coherence between the EU’s food security and climate change objectives.

This is a significant step forward in ensuring that food production is regarded as a particular case. This will not exclude the agriculture and food sectors from taking actions to mitigate climate change, but it does acknowledge that forestry and grasslands are carbon sinks and so already play a part in the mitigation effort.

The EU Commission will now come forward with the best means to encourage sustainable intensification of food production, which simply means finding ways to produce more food using fewer resources. It will require a significant investment in agriculture research and advisory services.

Optimising the contribution of the sector to greenhouse gas mitigation and sequestration, including through forestry, will also be looked at.

How to incorporate land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) into the 2030 greenhouse gas mitigation framework will also be established before 2020.

So discussions around agriculture and climate change will not go away and will instead become more intense. The objectives of sustainable intensification require knowledge and investment, but it can lead to a more efficient agriculture and hopefully a more profitable and more sustainable one.

Already, Bord Bia has launched its Origin Green initiative and is measuring emissions on beef farms with a view to using our low emissions per unit of output as a unique selling point for Irish beef. Farmers are talking about carbon counting. How we use fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides will also be impacted by the climate debate.

The EU has set an ambitious binding target of at least 40 per cent domestic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared with 1990. Agriculture will be asked to make a contribution.

Tackling greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture is not an easy task, but greater efficiencies and less waste can make a contribution. Ever the optimist, Dr Pachauri of the IPCC also believes that we will find technological and scientific breakthroughs to deal with the climate challenge – let’s hope he is right!

“For some non-governmental organisations, too little is being demanded and they see the need for significant changes in agriculture and food production to address the climate challenge.”

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RURAL RENEWAL

Meet THE

Minister Ear To The Ground editor Ruraidh Conlon O’Reilly talks to Ireland’s first-ever Minister for Rural Affairs, Ann Phelan, about the new portfolio, rural renewal, and what she can do in the short time before the next election.

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his July a familiar pantomime took place according to a timehonoured script: the Irish reshuffle. All the elements were present and correct – smiling hopefuls setting out their stalls beforehand, incumbents desperately trying to appear indispensible to the Taoiseach, the sense of nervousness on the day, and the celebrations and recriminations thereafter.

So far, so normal. But as Phil Hogan, Ming and Brian Hayes queued up for their break-ofdawn Ryanair to Brussels, and an autumn of fighting erupted over things like Irish Water and the botched IMMA board appointment, something much less controversial had been announced in a low key: Ireland has its firstever minister for rural affairs.

Step forward Kilkenny’s Ann Phelan. Based in Agriculture House on Kildare Street, the Labour TD was part of the 2011 ‘Gilmore Gale’

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Ireland in this Government and for me that is a great sense of fulfilment as well.”

It’s a challenge, because different parts of rural Ireland are affected by different issues, and a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work, but “trying to discover the potential in rural Ireland” is the aim.

Phelan is from Graiguenamanagh, a small rural town on the River Barrow in Co Kilkenny, on the border with Carlow.

It’s dependent on the farming community and its hinterland for its survival, and its main street has suffered a serious decline over the years, with shops closing.

Unemployment and emigration have hit.

Not all of the problems are purely economic, but they’re all “economically connected”, she says, and sustainable job creation is the key. Boost job creation and the local post office, pub and GAA team can be supported by the community.

Rural transport is always an issue. “It’s challenges like that that I’m acutely aware of because I’ve actually lived with them,” she says.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. What does her town do right?

“Graiguenamanagh still retains that friendliness that we like to identify in Ireland as a tourism product. We have some very nice natural landscape that I believe is underutilised” – so the plan is to work with the various agencies to see if the canal can help all those towns along the Barrow to reinvent themselves through tourism.

“I have been around farming most of my whole adult life. I believe that the support that I would have got myself would have come from the farming community.”

in that year’s election upheaval, having served on Kilkenny County Council since 2004. Her full title is something like Minister of State at the Departments of Agriculture, Food and Marine and Transport, Tourism and Sport with Special Responsibility for Rural Economic Development (Implementation of the CEDRA Report) and Rural Transport. So that’s exactly what we talk about.

SETTLING IN “We’re well settled in at this stage – it was hit the ground running, really,” she says, after a bit of getting used to things in July. “I think it’s an extremely important portfolio because all my political life I’ve been living in a very rural part of Ireland and I’ve seen, over the years, how disadvantaged rural Ireland can be.

“I see myself being the advocate for rural

LABOUR PAINS It’s tough times for Phelan’s Labour Party, with devastating results in this year’s local and European elections and opinion poll numbers looking sickly. One such poll, in the Irish Examiner, puts the party at one per cent among farmers. Does that put her in a difficult position as minister for rural affairs? “Now I would have to say I have been around farming most of my whole adult life. I believe that the support that I would have got myself would have come from the farming community.”

She reckons that a certain sector of the farming community looks to Labour for representation, and sees more than one per cent coming through the door of her constituency office.

Is there anything distinctively Labour about her approach? “Yeah, I think the whole area of social inclusion,” she says. “I really believe that the Labour Party, at the heart of its policies, are the whole area of social inclusion: delivering education not only to the upper echelons of society but making sure that everybody down at the least prosperous part of society gets all the supports and all of the government supports that they deserve to have as well.”

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RURAL RENEWAL

word, but she mentions it herself before I get the chance. “I actually don’t believe that socialism is about taking the wealth from wealthy people and redistributing it.

What I actually believe socialism is about is taking all the reserves and all of the assets that we have and trying to bring those people to be able to deliver the wealth for themselves – so to give them the tools to create their own wealth, rather than taking wealth from other people who have created it and redistributing it, albeit society is built on that premise anyway.”

Would she describe herself as a socialist?

“I would describe myself as a socialist, yes I would.” It’s pointed out that rural Ireland

doesn’t seem like a particularly socialist place, but Phelan says that it means different things to different people: when people come into her constituency office for help, making that representation is a socialist act. Socialism isn’t something Labour talks about much in public, but Phelan says that while it might be seen as old-fashioned, it’s alive and well in the Labour Party as the party of social inclusion, of work, and of the fruits of one’s labour.

But things take a turn for the weird two days later, when she asks her assistant to point out that she is, in fact, not a socialist but a social democrat.

“I actually don’t believe that socialism is about taking the wealth from wealthy people and redistributing it... I would describe myself as a socialist, yes I would.”

CEDRA According to that everything-but-thekitchen-sink ministerial job title, Phelan has responsibility for implementating something called the CEDRA report.

Chaired by Kerry GAA legend Pat Spillane and backed by Teagasc, the Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas came up with a comprehensive report and 34 headline recommendations back in April. It’s a landmark. But these things tend to just gather dust. What will be done?

Firstly, Phelan accepts the report fully. The trouble is that she doesn’t have much time: it’s a year and a half, max, before there has to be an election.

“So for me I’ve had to pick a number of priority areas. The priority area for me overall is the development of rural economic development zones” – REDZ for short; particular areas targeted with a catalogue of government and state agency suppports. They will be used as pilot areas: when she met her officials upon taking EAR TO THE GROUND 27

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The issues in brief TEAGASC STAFFING PROBLEMS: “This is a difficulty and I’ve brought it to Minister Coveney’s attention that there are serious difficulties within Teagasc trying to deliver with the demand.”

IS THE IRISH WATER CONTROVERSY OBSTRUCTING YOUR WORK? The interesting thing about Irish Water, and in some cases for me being a rural TD, is that it’s sometimes an issue of equality – because there are a lot of people in rural Ireland at the moment who do pay for water, and pay significantly for water. And the other interesting thing about people in rural Ireland who are in group water schemes, people who sink their own well... they have to have their own insurance, they have to pay for electricity, if the electricity’s cut off they have no water. So there are quite a number of people in rural Ireland who do pay for water even as we speak.

WHAT’S THE STATE OF PLAY FOR RURAL POST OFFICES? Yes, I accept there are huge challenges to the post office network.

Again, I am very passionate about the post office network. I was on the transport committee prior to being here and I recognise that there is a level of service that the post office delivers to the public out there that is not quantifiable economically. There is a committee set up within the Department of Communications and Natural Resources; An Post are sitting at that, the Irish Postmasters’ Union are sitting at that committee. I will be at that committee as well, and Minister Alex White will sit, possibly intermittently, on that committee. A lot is about exploring what can government do across its departments to support that post office network. A lot of it will also be looking at, perhaps in five or ten years time, what type of a post office network can we have in rural Ireland. I don’t believe it’s all doom or gloom for the post office network. Perhaps we need to reinvent what the post office network actually can be.

ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT LABOUR’S FUTURE, AND EVEN YOUR OWN CAREER? Yes, it is a worry but if I spend all my time worrying I will get nothing done. So I’ve decided that I will work as hard as I can, as I’ve always done up to now. I think I’ll have to let the election then take care of itself. I will stand because I didn’t make promises to people on the doors as I went across Carlow/Kilkenny. The only promise I gave them was that if elected I would work hard to get the country back on its feet and I think we are beginning to see that happen now, and the reason why my ministry was created is to take that economic recovery and now make it felt across rural Ireland as well as in the large urban areas.

HAVE YOU ENCOUNTERED ANY SEXISM IN THE ROLE? No, I can’t say that I have encountered any sexism in particular, albeit I will say that we tend to operate in a particularly maledominated society. I haven’t been able to identify any individual or indeed any individual thing that has tried to hold me back.

IS RECOVERY ACTUALLY BEING FELT IN RURAL AREAS? I don’t think it’s quite filtered down to rural areas just yet. I think perhaps it’s going to be a little bit more slowly, albeit I do see the recovery taking place when I travel to Dublin from my consituency and the level of traffic that is now on the roads compared to when I was first elected is quite significant. So while that is not a very scientific approach to how the recovery is happening, the roads are a lot busier and I’m taking that as a benchmark of how things are doing.

up the job, she said “please do not come back to me with more reports. Please come back with actions that will make something happen.”

Teagasc and Pobal are looking at the criteria for selecting the zones, and they have to be above-board without political interference. It’s hoped that they’re up and running in 2015. The aim is to help local authorities to draw up plans for towns and villages in their remit: imposing a plan from Dublin won’t get people to buy in.

Item one in the CEDRA report was for the Government to come up with a clear and committed plan for rural renewal up to 2025. Will there be one? Phelan says that the new zones, as case studies, will have to be trialled first. Then comes the plan, and roll-out all over Ireland through the local authorities. CEDRA also said that all this activity should be under the Department of the Environment, yet here we are talking in her office in the Department of Agriculture.

Logistics is the reason, she says, and she works with a host of different departments.

The issue of access to broadband just won’t go away, and it’s still hard to see an end in sight. CEDRA recommended that it should be available everywhere by the end of 2015. That’s pretty unlikely. Indeed, shortly after our interview Minister Alex White announced plans for high-speed broadband to be available everywhere by 2020. Phelan acknowledges that it’s a big issue for job creation, for farmers conducting business online, and for combating rural isolation.

“For me, the CEDRA is my Bible,” she says: she puts rural Ireland in a Celtic Tiger context whereby tourism was forgotten about. “And I feel the focus that is now put back on rural Ireland, with a ministry that has responsibility for rural Ireland, will really help in sorting out some of the issues that exist in rural Ireland. And I think that having a government minister being able to speak up for rural Ireland and being the voice of rural Ireland at that table certainly gives rural Ireland a much better chance than it had up to now.”

Before politics, Phelan worked in a vet’s practice: “so I’m around agriculture all the time. In my previous life I used to help the farmers in their work and their dealings with the Department of Agriculture,” she laughs – “this is not the biggest leap forward for me [that] you might imagine. So I’m still trying to help the farmers!”

With the clock ticking on a menacing election and a full programme of quite technocratic work ahead, it’s hard to imagine the next 18 months being any fun. But the mood seems high, and she’s eager to underline her commitment.

It will be a year and a half that proves whether or not Kildare Street takes rural renewal seriously.

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New Beginnings FOR MAEVE, MARY AND LOUGHMORE Shop, tea-room and all-round community focal point The Cottage Loughmore has gone from strength to strength since it was established in 2012. Aoife Loy speaks to Maeve O’Hair and Mary Fogarty about how it has given the local community a new lease of life and how it can be a model for other communities to aspire to.

T

hrough cutbacks on services and the closure of many businesses, the economic recession, as we know, has affected everyone. In countryside communities, one effect has been to exacerbate rural isolation – a topical subject at present. The village of Loughmore in Co Tipperary is one such place that was hit hard by downturn. It even lost its post box.

But due to the combined efforts of the local community, the village has since been revitalised. This has been achieved largely thanks to the work of Maeve O’Hair and Mary Fogarty, who founded the Cottage Loughmore, a co-operative shop and tearooms – and the winner of The Irish Times’ best café/teashop award for 2014. It has now become not only a vibrant social hub and service used daily by the local community, but also a destination in itself, with people coming from all over Ireland to hear the story of how Maeve and Mary set it up.

CHANCE MEETINGS AND TWISTS OF FATE Before setting up the co-operative, Mary had worked in a bank. “I worked there for a number of years,” she says. “Then I got breast cancer in 2009 and was out of work. It wasn’t until I was ill that I realised that there were no services in the village, and I said to myself I would do something about it.

“I had started to bake and I found it very therapeutic. My parents had had

a shop in the village years ago and I thought perhaps I would reopen it and sell my baking.” However, the enormity of undertaking this task alone began to seem daunting. One day she mentioned her ideas to a friend, Carmel Delaney, who had experience of another community project in Crosspatrick. Carmel suggested that Mary go down the community route, which led her to researching the Plunkett Foundation, an English organisation that empowers rural communities to take control of the issues affecting them, through co-operatives and community ownership.

“Then one day I met Maeve in town and the two of us shared our ideas,” Mary

“We were standing at the sink washing up and I told Maeve about my idea for the co-operative and she loved it. From that night on, we decided that both of us would get together and form the co-operative.”

continues. “Maeve had been thinking of opening a tearooms and the two of us had similar thoughts.” The two women parted ways that day, but met again at a funeral a few months later. “We were standing at the sink washing up and I told Maeve about my idea for the co-operative and she loved it. From that night on, we decided that both of us would get together and form the co-operative and do something about the lack of services in the village.”

Tragedy had struck Maeve in a different way when she lost her husband six years ago and was left as a young widow with two small children. “Since I became a widow, I noticed a lot of loneliness out there, and a lot of social isolation,” she says. “You’d notice it in yourself but you notice it with others as well. I had the strong desire, at the time, to open a social space in the form of a tearoom and I always had the dream to have it in my sister’s cottage. I had asked her for it a few years beforehand, but she was trying to sell it at the time.”

Fate, shes says, brought herself and Mary together and eventually they decided to have a shop and tearooms combined.

Decision made, the lack of premises was a challenge and they looked at many options, including using a community hall – which would have involved knocking a wall. Then out of the blue, Maeve’s sister sent her a text message offering the cottage for rent, if she was still interested.

“I couldn’t believe it, because I hadn’t spoken to her at all,” she laughs. “It was just one of those wonderful things that

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“Our dreams have been totally surpassed, because now it’s the social hub of the community.

It’s bringing such life and joy back to the parish – you couldn’t describe it.”

happen in life.” Thrilled, finally the two women had a premises and from then on, they agree, not a single day went by that they didn’t do something to progress their dream of opening up the cottage.

Obtaining funds was the next challenge, and they eventually approached LEADER – a rural development programme partfunded by the European Union – where they were looked after by Pat Killeen. “They thought that the idea was just brilliant,” Mary says. “Completely new to them and they didn’t know how to deal with it in the beginning – where to slot us in. But they slotted us in under village rejuvenation; we were subsequently awarded 75 per cent funding from LEADER to set up the business, which was a huge help to us because we could buy the furniture and the electrical equipment.”

In another twist of fate, Pat Killeen

discovered that the CEO of the Plunkett Foundation, Peter Couchman, was going to be speaking in Ireland and arranged for Maeve and Mary to attend and to meet him. This culminated in an invitation to England where they researched the cooperatives, and came back inspired and full of energy for their own.

THE HUB OF THE COMMUNITY “When we came back then, we organised a public meeting in our community centre and we invited all the parish to the meeting to share our idea with them,” Maeve continues. “We asked them if they would become shareholders in our cooperative and we got an overwhelming response from the community. They were delighted because there had been no shop in the community for seven years.

The recession had hit the village hard and

the village was dying so this was going to bring back life. Our dreams have been totally surpassed, because now it’s the social hub of the community. It’s bringing such life and joy back to the parish – you couldn’t describe it.”

Maeve and Mary had two nights where they invited the people in the community to take out shares, which cost just e10.

Now 50 people are involved in the cooperative. In addition to the shareholders, nine food producers produce for them on a daily or a weekly basis. They also have ten crafters, including woodcraft, jewellery and pottery. The co-operative employs four people part-time, and takes people on Tús programmes and volunteers who come in for two hours at a time.

Horace Plunkett started the cooperative movement in Ireland in the 1900s, but relocated to England during the Civil War. However, Maeve says, the foundation hopes to come back and support co-operatives trying to start up in rural Ireland which, she says, is fantastic news. “There has been a big development from what Maeve and I have started,” Mary says. “We’ve had lots of groups from around Ireland coming to us and there’s at least six groups nearly ready to start their own projects. It doesn’t have to be a shop and tearooms – it could be anything.

But it’s something that can be replicated and if people can come together, we could set up a network of co-operatives around Ireland. We can communicate with each other and help each other.

That’s our vision – to be able to help other communities.”

While the future looks set for a wave of further co-operatives, the positive effects are already being felt by the Loughmore community. And there’s more good news: they’ve gotten the post box back.

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Wasteland Parklands FROM

TO

Throughout the past 20 years, an unlikely Co Offaly bog has been converted into a major visitor attraction and focal point for the community, with its wildlife reserves and sculpture park. Ian Maleney visits Lough Boora Parklands, an innovative example of putting depleted bogland to good use.

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RURAL RENEWAL

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n this particular Friday afternoon, Lough Boora Discovery Park wasn’t looking its best. It had been raining all day, and the west Offaly skies were a harsh grey over the vast expanse of bog, lake and farmland. It was weather for the ducks, who at least looked like they were enjoying themselves. One man was taking photos of the birds, and two elderly women with their hoods up made a circuit of the lake. A few cars drove up and down the rain-splattered road.

The only two customers at the newlybuilt café were myself and Tom Egan, an employee of Bord Na Móna and a project manager at Lough Boora Parklands. With Egan’s oversight over the past 20 years, Lough Boora has been transformed from a soon-to-be-obsolete peat-harvesting bog into a thriving habitat for flora, fauna and the creative arts.

The story starts around 1995, when much of the Bord Na Móna-owned cutaway bogland in Boora was being reclaimed.

After decades of producing peat for local power stations, the bog’s energy potential was spent. Egan was then involved in selling viable land to farmers, as well as investigating other possible land use. This led him and a group of co-workers to the idea of creating a small lake for anglers on the site. They made a plan to apply for Leader funding, which was just coming on stream at that time. When they put their heads together, they realised there was potential for more than just one lake.

“We came up with what we decided was an integrated land use plan that would include farming, forestry and amenity and recreation,” he says. This would draw in “whatever else you could get into it like angling lakes, wetlands, so that there would be a plan for the whole area rather than going in with a small plan for a lake.”

That initial concept is still developing now, almost two decades later, and Egan describes the evolution of the site as “organic”. The team behind the lake soon got involved in adding walkways around the area, clearing the old railway lines and opening up the nearby Mesolithic site to archaeologically-curious visitors. They

added more lakes and wetlands, which soon became a bird-watchers’ paradise.

They received funding from the EU, Fáilte Ireland and the West Offaly Development Fund, which often had to be matched by Bord Na Móna itself. They worked with Offaly County Council to make the site as wheelchair-accessible as possible, as well as adding 10km of off-road cycle paths that allowed visitors to get a far better grasp of the scale and diversity of the Parklands.

A MAJOR VISITOR ATTRACTION The sustainable future talked of by the Sculpture Park artists [see panel] is certainly on Egan’s mind too. As more of Bord Na Móna’s bogs across the midlands are reclaimed, Boora has led the way in showing how that land can be turned to positive environmental and social use. The Parklands are now home to the last wild indigenous population of partridge left in Ireland, as well as significant numbers of whooper swans, lapwings and dozens of other birds. Insect and plant life thrives all around. Managing an area of this size, split between many towns and townlands, requires strong partnerships with local community groups and structures.

“We need to take in all these different organisations who have expertise in different things,” says Egan. “Things are going to grow and if you don’t control them, they’re going to be of no use in a certain amount of time. So it’s a great chance to move with it as it’s happening and work with it.”

The benefit of a resource like this – open, free, multifunctional – to a region like west Offaly cannot be overestimated.

Egan mentions anglers, scouts, farmers, birdwatchers, walkers, cyclists, gun clubs, photographers and even astrologists who are using the park and are invested in keeping it safe. He also points out that the site is often used for charity events, and the annual Heritage Week celebrations draw thousands of people for music, drama, food and fun.

As visitor numbers climbed over recent years, Bord Na Móna decided that a recognised point of arrival was needed, and so the Visitors’ Centre was built overlooking the smallest lake, Loch an Dochas.

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RURAL RENEWAL “It was the one thing that was missing,” says Egan. “It was higgledypiggledy, there were bits and pieces here but there was no central destination. I suppose the real value wasn’t being got out of it because of that.”

Outside the Visitors’ Centre, Pat Barrows’ Bike Rental is flourishing, having grown from a small shed with a handful of bikes to a fulltime operation with 160 bikes for rent, and trailers for kids to cycle along behind their parents. The cyclepaths have doubled in length to encompass a 20km circuit, opening up more of the park to people and activity than ever before.

On a recent Sunday afternoon visit, artist and architect Caelan Bristow was stunned by the amount of people on site. It was a totally different landscape to what she had first encountered a decade ago. She also notes how important it is for the Parklands to keep the local heritage alive and visible in order to create a strong sense of community in places like Boora and its surrounds.

“It wasn’t just an industry, it was a way of life,” she says. “It influenced the communities that are scattered around it and how incredibly distinct they are. I wonder if the bog kind of holds everybody apart, and then doing something like this, all of a sudden, people are crossing paths and interacting.”

Much like the workshops and power stations that were here before, the Lough Boora Parklands are serving as a meeting point for rural people, drawing them to a place that resonates with both history and a distinct sense of possibility.

Sculpting the future

While the Parklands were known locally as a nice spot for spending a slow Sunday, the big shift in terms of visitor numbers and outside interest came in 2002, when work began on the sculpture park. Born in New York but raised in Tipperary, designer and metalsmith Kevin O’Dwyer had moved to Offaly in 1999 and got involved with the Offaly Heritage Council, which Egan also sat on. After walking his dog around the Parklands, O’Dwyer suggested that a disused area away from the lakes might be put to some good use as a site for large-scale sculpture.

After two years of industrious fundraising, O’Dwyer – then installed as artistic director – convened six artists on site for an “international sculpture symposium”. Along with some twodozen Bord Na Móna engineers, they erected eight sculptures in just three weeks. Some of the Parklands’ most unique and striking pieces were finished in that time, with the likes of Michael Bulfin’s Sky Train and Eileen MacDonagh’s Boora Pyramid still standing and still causing conversation today. Also included in that first rush of work was O’Dwyer’s own 60 Degrees, which highlights many of the sculpture park’s central concerns.

“They were pulling up an old railway line at the time, one of the ones that went into the Ferbane Power Station, so I took the rail and I took the oak sleepers and the steel from that and built the first and third triangular form in wood and steel,” O’Dwyer says. “The idea of reusing materials that people were very familiar with in this landscape made these abstract pieces more palatable. People took a stronger interest in it. They could see materials that were used for harvesting bog, that were very familiar to them, being used in a completely different way.”

The artists all had a similar brief: to make work that responds to this particular place, with its particular environmental and industrial history. At the initial symposium and in the years since, the artists have all come and lived locally for a period of weeks in order to get to know the area, and to let the area get to know them.

“With so many pieces of public art, a crane comes in and drops in this piece of art and everybody is scratching their head and saying where the hell did that come from,” says O’Dwyer. “Whereas we all lived there, we all spent our time there. We drank in the Boora Inn, we met and worked with all the Bord Na Móna workers so they brought their families out to see what was going on. People felt like they knew the artists.” While the artists were getting to know the Bord Na Móna workers, the reverse was also true, and Egan says that many of the engineers learned new skills in the

process of turning the artists’ ideas into reality.

Perhaps most importantly, working alongside the artists gave them a new perspective on the possibilities of the area. “We see the bog timbers there, they’re lying there and you’re kind of pegging them from one place to another out of your way,” says Egan. “Then some fella comes in with the imagination to make [Alfio Bonanno’s piece Earth and Sky] out of them. It’s fascinating.

Same with the Pyramid and the Sky Train. Those yokes were sitting rusting in the yard and then somebody can come out and make a work of art out of it.”

INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE Artist and architect Caelan Bristow was also inspired by the area’s industrial heritage, turning an old peat tippler into a shelter – something she thought was missing from the place on her first visit. “My first impression was that it was almost inhospitable and harsh because there was no shelter,” she says. “The landscape is changing now, it’s a much richer kind of feeling now.

At the time, I remember thinking it was really interesting as an industrial landscape, a barren industrial landscape. I was more interested in the objects that I could find there than the landscape because I felt it was so barren and lacking in vegetation.”

The harsh landscape was what attracted English sculptor Julian Wild to the project when O’Dwyer invited him to over. Wild began to work closely with Bord Na Móna’s engineers, resulting in the semi-aquatic metal sculpture System 30. “I loved its bleakness,” says Wild. “I was fascinated by the place and the ingenuity there in which machines were made bespoke for a specific purpose. I think the rich history of cutting and processing turf on an industrial scale is something to be proud of because it encompassed endeavour and ingenuity on a massive scale. I think by inviting artists to make work for the site it encourages people to think about this past and how we can adapt and create a more sustainable future.”

34 EAR TO THE GROUND

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RURAL RENEWAL

RURAL ART

Revolution The past ten years have seen arts centres spring up in locations where galleries and theatres were once difficult to envisage.

How are they surviving, and what do they offer their communities? Ian Maleney reports.

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RURAL RENEWAL

W

Farmyard animals form part of an exhibition by Sean Lynch at Visual, an arts centre in Carlow

alking into Visual this past autumn, one would quickly sense that something a little different awaited.

You could smell it on the air, a pungent odour not common to contemporary art galleries. Wafting through the walls of sheer grey stone and glass was the unmistakable smell of hay. Turning a corner you see them: a cow and a calf, happily bedded down in the middle of the straw-strewn gallery floor. Around them, art lovers sit comfortably on square bales, watching, talking, laughing. Some of the brave ones go over and give the mother and child a rub on the head. This is contemporary art with a distinctly Carlow twist.

Visual is one of the leading centres for contemporary art in the country and one of many impressive art centres that sprung up around the country since the turn of the millennium. Challenging the idea that the best of modern art practice could survive only in cities, these centres are now vital institutions for their local communities, offering a broad range of creative and intellectual experiences that rival anything on offer in our biggest urban centres.

Built during the Celtic Tiger era, many of these centres are now faced with a very different and altogether less hospitable economic environment. They often play the roles of gallery, venue, café, town hall and school all at the same time, requiring their staff to juggle a diverse set of demands. For Ann Mulrooney, director of Visual, the primary challenge is finding the overlap between the best of contemporary art, and the everyday experiences of Carlow people.

“It’s about giving people the tools to be able to access contemporary work, which can be challenging sometimes,” she says.

“It’s important that we show contemporary work but we make sure that we make it relevant and accessible to people in the region who wouldn’t necessarily have a background in the arts.”

Bringing livestock into your beautiful gallery is certainly one way of breaking down those barriers. The animals are part of an exhibition by Sean Lynch, exploring the legendary Irish tale of mad king Sweeney Astray and the resonance such a story has on the life in the area today. Elsewhere in the building, another exhibition displays new landscape paintings by Adam Bohanna beside older work by one of Carlow’s most famous

IN THE DOCK The Dock, Carrick-On-Shannon

“While we all operate exclusively in our own areas, we’re part of a bigger picture,” says Paul Cunningham of the Dock in Carrick-On-Shannon. “We should all be working toward the same end, which I think is to allow artists the opportunity to present their work to audiences and hopefully to gain from that, both financially and in terms of their artistic objectives.” Johnston points out that the fastest growing sector in the north-west is the creative industries, while Cunningham highlights the important social aspect of arts centres that provide a context and location for this latent creativity to spark.

“What we’ve done, hopefully, is create a space where people can come, meet with others, view beautiful and really interesting work and socialise around an arts hub,” he says. “Hopefully creativity will come out of that.”

The Dock has recently been involved in the making of a documentary about the history of the uilleann pipes, covering both the making and the playing of the distinctly Irish instrument in the north-west. It’s due to see light of day in 2015, when the centre celebrates its tenth birthday. Such a project is rooted deep in the history of the area, and celebrating traditional craftsmanship like this is an important part of what makes places like the Dock vital in helping to maintain a sense of local identity and regional pride.

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RURAL RENEWAL artistic sons, Frank O’Meara. This blending of old and new, the familiar with the cutting-edge, is an approach Mulrooney sees a lot of value in as she tries to tempt audiences across the threshold.

“There’s a difference in the landscape that Frank O’Meara engaged with and the landscape that Adam Bohanna engages with, but the process, the reaction is still the same,” she says. “It’s very much looking at where Visual is situated, the landscape that we are in everyday and which is familiar to the people around us.”

This familiarity can give audiences what Mulrooney calls “a sense of ownership”, both of the artwork and of Visual more generally. This sense that the institution is there to serve the local community, through visual art but also through music, theatre and creative workshops, is what keeps the centre alive. It’s only through partnership with the public that a resource like Visual can continue, not just to exist, but to thrive.

A little further north of Sligo, the Donegal Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny has taken a very proactive approach to this challenge. Each October, they have an exhibition celebrating the finest work produced by that year’s Junior Cert art students from all across the county. Over 100 students from two-dozen schools participate, and hundreds of family members, friends and fellow students come out to support it. Sean Hannigan, director of the centre, was a little sceptical about the idea at first.

“Initially I was thinking: is the quality here sufficiently good? Is this the right thing to be doing?” he says. “But the more we’ve done it, we’ve found it’s such a successful model and the work is wonderful because it’s just an explosion

“It’s important that we show contemporary work but we make sure that we make it relevant and accessible to people in the region who wouldn’t necessarily have a background in the arts.”

Glór, in Ennis, has made a name itself in traditional music and the Co Clare art scene

CUTTING-EDGE AND CONTEMPORARY Glór in Ennis has also begun to put this kind of work to the fore with their now annual MórGlór awards.

Each year, the centre organises an event to celebrate an artist, group, organisation or festival that has made an outstanding contribution to the traditional music and arts landscape in Co Clare. The first year was a tribute to Muiris Ó Rócháin, founder of the Willy Clancy Festival, and the next celebrated the Corofin Traditional Festival. This kind of event is a rare chance to honour the people who make a difference to local people’s lives and cultures. Far from stagnating through challenging times, Ireland’s regional arts centres are leading the way in making cuttingedge, contemporary art resonate with Irish people, as well as keeping local histories alive.

Perhaps most importantly, these centres are proving just how strong an appetite there is for contemporary art outside the Pale, and Megan Johnston of the Model in Sligo reckons people in the capital are beginning to notice. “I think the national institutions based in Dublin are beginning to realise this, that the audiences that they reach are outside of Dublin as well,” she says. “Those are my audiences, we already have them – we just need to figure out how to connect with them.” Given the recent evidence, it would seem like they’re doing a pretty good job of that already.

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RURAL RENEWAL

of teenage creativity.”

The buzz of seeing your own or your peers’ work hanging on the same walls as some of the artists they’re reading about in class cannot be underestimated: it makes the gallery seem fully accessible to a new generation, and once again it’s about that sense of ownership. Hannigan also reckons that the Junior Cert show highlights the ability smaller arts centres have to take genuine risks on their programming.

“This year we went from a major Patrick Scott exhibition to the Junior Cert art, so the contrast was considerable,” he says. “I think if we were in Dublin it’d be hard to do that.”

Of the centres Ear To The Ground spoke to, the RCC has been hardest hit by the economic downturn. While the others describe themselves as lucky to have escaped the worst of the cuts, Hannigan has seen his budgets slashed by 50 per cent and staff numbers reduced from seven to just one. While this has curtailed their ability to take on the kinds of shows they once did, Hannigan is cautiously optimistic about the immediate future, sensing a shift in the prevailing winds.

“I’ve a sense that there’s some optimism or some sense of looking forward, looking out again after the head-down survival of the past five years,” he says. “A lot of the smaller arts organisations in the county have had 100 per cent funding cuts, and some of them have gone completely.

Some are hanging in there but it means it’s like a post-storm time now. We’re looking around to see what’s left, almost – and what we can do about it.”

Hannigan describes the arts in Donegal as an ecosystem, with all the organisations and groups relying on each other. This plays out nationally as well. While these centres are individually funded by local authorities and the Arts Council, they rely on each other for momentum – a key factor in making things happen.

“I’ve a sense that there’s some optimism or some sense of looking forward, looking out again after the head-down survival of the past five years.”

Encouraging schoolchildren to get involved is an important part of the Model’s work in Sligo

PARTNERSHIP MODEL Partnership is a word heard a lot as one talks to people involved in centres like Visual all around the country. In one way, the economic climate has forced their collective hand, but many in the sector are confident that such interdependence and co-operation is simply the smartest way to work, come boom or bust. “We can do more together than we can on our own,” says Megan Johnston, director of the Model in Sligo. “We’re going to reach more people, we’re going to connect with more people, we’re going to have better ideas. I think even if the recession didn’t happen, this is the best way to function.” Johnston took over as director of the Model last September, and has spent most of her time since then trying to meet with as many people as possible – over 100 in the first month alone. She describes this as an effort to signal to the local community in the north-west that the Model is not only open for business, but actively looking to collaborate on projects. “An institution is a building, or a group of people, a body, a vessel through which you do work,” she says. “But, if you think of it as a person, how do you go and meet people? How do you make friends in a new place? How do you build relationships? Well, you meet people where they’re at. You go out and meet them, you talk to them, you invite them to come over for dinner, you go to their parties, you’re interested in what

they’re doing, you join clubs. This isn’t really rocket science. It’s nothing more than oldfashioned good neighbourliness.”

Like Mulrooney, Johnston isn’t concerned about her audience’s desire for challenging and insightful contemporary work. She knows that if she can get people in the door, good art will speak for itself – “It’s really important not to underestimate your audiences,” she says. Of course, not all the audience is fully grown up either. All the centres agree that the younger you get kids into these places, the more likely they are to come back as adults, so finding ways to get schoolchildren engaged and participating in art is vital. “We have almost every school in Sligo coming to the Model at some point,” says Johnston. “Usually every year. If not, every other year. But we also go very deep.

We try to have repeat visits, where people can come and have deeper experiences than just a one-off.”

40 EAR TO THE GROUND

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FEATURES

Features OUT AND ABOUT

T

here’s a school of thought that says that rural Ireland offers a better quality of life – and a happier life – than elsewhere.

There’s certainly plenty going on, whether it’s efforts to make our farms safer, or or boost our crucial bee population, or commemorate the life of an extraordinary character whose inventions changed farming forever.

Harry Ferguson Agricultural solicitor Credit unions Bees

45 49 52 57

Farm safety Teagasc recruitment Rural happiness

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HARRY FERGUSON

AN IRISH

genius Ruraidh Conlon O’Reilly recalls the life of wayward Co Down inventor Harry Ferguson – and the work of enthusiasts who remember him and his machines.

S

ome 130 years ago, one of the world’s great inventors was born in a farmhouse in Dromore, Co Down. By the time of his death in 1960 he had revolutionised agriculture, been ranked alongside Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright brothers by Time magazine, built a fortune and left a catalogue of stories and eccentricity in his wake.

This young boy was Harry Ferguson, his surname familiar to anyone who has ever passed within 100 yards of a field in the western hemisphere. The father of the

modern tractor, the machines that bore his name – like the iconic Little Grey Fergie, or the Massey Ferguson brand that lives on today – have formed the backbone of many a farm.

Then there were the extra-curricular projects like designing, building and piloting the first plane to fly in Ireland; and building the first and only four-wheeldrive car to win a Formula One race. And somewhere along the way he sued Henry Ford II for $251,000,000.

But more to the point, he invented the three-point hitch: the Ferguson system, still in use today, was a giant leap in ag-

riculture, allowing the farmer to safely, quickly and reliably plough a field or attach all manner of implements to the back of the tractor. It was his crowning achievement.

REMEMBERING HARRY When we speak, Bill Forsythe is busy preparing for that night’s lecture – the 20th year that Ferguson enthusiasts have gathered near his birthplace to remember the inventor, hear a few words, chat and watch some tractor films. Forsythe is a long-standing veteran and prime mover behind efforts to commemorate the EAR TO THE GROUND 45

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HARRY FERGUSON

1884

Born in Dromore, Co Down

1909

Designs, builds and flies first airplane in Ireland

inventor, and Ferguson is spoken of in words of respect and admiration.

“Harry Ferguson would be very important indeed in terms of putting food on the table,” he says. “He was a man who was not looking forward to a very difficult farming life as a manual labourer. That’s really how he started out: his father wanted him to work on the farm, but he was small in stature and he didn’t like the idea of that. It was a very difficult job in those days, working behind horses and whathave-you. Harry decided that if he could invent something that would be mechanical, the work for the horses or men would be a lot less laborious.

“And, indeed, that’s what he achieved.

He brought food to the table that much quicker, and much speedier in terms of labour. That’s what he was about: he was about engineering and inventing things that would make life easier for everyone.”

The turn of the century was early days for the discipline of engineering, but Ferguson’s brother Joe was a capable engineer and owned a garage in Belfast. Joe encouraged Harry not to leave the country: Harry was on the verge of buying a ticket to Canada for when he left school, but a job at Joe’s garage kept him on this side of the pond.

Raised in the staunch Plymouth Brethren faith, Ferguson’s life of adventure saw him participate in the loyalist Larne gun running and numerous escapades such as that early flight, as well as fearsome motorcycle races that earned him the nickname The Mad Mechanic. Ferguson comes across as being determined: one of a kind.

“Yes, certainly,” says Forsythe: “all the reading and all the people who met him and have spoken to me [talk] about his nature. His nature was very strict – even though he was complaining about how strict his father was, Harry himself was very strict. That would have been in relation to how you were dressed, how you would complete a job and how you would present yourself. Even down to punctuality, he was very much into having people

1928

Patents three-point linkage

1936

Produces tractors with David Brown

The Harry Ferguson memorial at Dromore, Co Down

who work for him doing the right thing at the right time in the right place and wearing the right thing.

“That came across time and time again where he would actually approach some of the workers, even down to: ‘when did you last shave, sir?’ ‘Well, I shaved last night, Mr Ferguson, before I went to bed.’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘I would suggest that tomorrow you shave in the morning before you come in and then you will not have a growth at lunchtime. I want my workers to be clean and tidy to the end of the day.’

That’s how particular he was.

“Yes, he could be known as a difficult man. There’s no doubt about that. But most entrepreneurs and most very good businessmen sometimes can be like that.”

That raises a problem or two in remembering him. Ferguson had a difficult relationship with his father, who didn’t approve of him leaving the farm: he was expected to stay and be a labourer. Later, Ferguson had no great desire to return to the Dromore/Growell area because when he had attempted to sell his inventions they had met with negativity. His future lay in Coventry, where he produced his tractors and finally settled in Stowe-InThe-Wold.

1939

Partners with Henry Ford in illfated handshake agreement

But although things aren’t straightforward, he is remembered through the annual Harry Ferguson Lecture evening – and a striking and appropriate statue that Forsythe and his group erected at the Ferguson family homestead in 2008. “I think one of the main reasons we wanted to commemorate him was that we had lost a great engineer and that he had not been recognised in the way he should have been recognised,” he says.

COMMEMORATED IN BRONZE In 1999, classic car enthusiast Forsythe was approached by some local enthusiasts with a view to putting together some sort of club or committee. Forsythe began to get things organised, with no preconception of how or where the inventor might be commemorated. They began to raise money through Saturday Ferguson-only tractor runs, and enthusiasm grew: at one event there were 745 tractors from all corners of the island, and as far afield as England, Scotland and Wales. An especially committed group in Co Cavan raised £25,000, driving Ferguson tractors from Mizen Head to Malin Head: they were “part and parcel” of the commemoration efforts, as Forsythe gratefully acknowledges.

The Ferguson homestead still stands in Dromore, and became the logical location for the memorial. Offered the unused garden opposite the road from the house, it was “the rightful place”. The result was a life-sized statue of Harry standing at a gate just as he did as a young man.

It attracts coachloads of visitors from all over the world.

Forsythe was and is more of a classic car man than a tractor man, but he is speaking from what should be a spare bedroom in his house: in fact, it’s converted into an office steeped in Ferguson memorabilia, reflecting the huge amount of hard work that has gone in over the years. He hadn’t intended to be involved with the group for more than a few months. That can happen.

Alongside the memorial, the lecture

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HARRY FERGUSON

1948

TE-20, ‘Little Grey Fergie’, produced

1952

Settles lawsuit with Ford’s grandson

1953

Massey Harris and Ferguson merge

1960

Ferguson dies aged 75

1961

Stirling Moss wins in the Ferguson P99 4WD F1 car

Ferguson demonstrates the adaptability of his tractor, and his unique personality, by driving down the steps of Claridge’s in London.

evenings are another outlet for enthusiasts: they began in 1995 at Lisburn Technical College, but as old lecturers retired or passed on, it fell to others to keep it running or let it wither. It’s gone from strength to strength, with an engineeringthemed lecture in the first half of the programme, and some Ferguson talk and vintage footage after.

Some 250 people are expected to attend on the evening after we speak, in November. Harry’s granddaughter will be attending from London – she lends her support as often as she can. Some valuable social history is recorded, like the memories of those who worked for Ferguson and remember him first-hand.

FACTORYFRESH All over the world, in fact, enthusiasts go to great lengths to restore these machines, and to meet and remember and commemorate. Why? “The attraction of the Ferguson trac-

tor is not just ‘I want to do a tractor up and I want to use it and do this and that’”, says Forsythe. Firstly, the easy-to-maintain and easy-to-operate Ferguson machinery was simplicity itself. But what made Harry Ferguson was the three-point hitch at the back of the tractor. There had been numerous attempts to develop a simple and safe method of attaching a plough or other implement, but it wasn’t easy: if the plough hit an obstruction, the front of the tractor could rise off the ground and tip over. Farmers were injured or even killed.

Ferguson’s solution was a three-point hydraulically operated linkage device: when the plough is pushed down into the ground from the pressure of the gearbox, there’s a lever that also pushes the tractor down at the front. It may have been tinkered with using electronics in recent years, but it’s essentially the same.

“That’s why people want to restore these tractors: they are so simple and easy to work on, and easy to build. There’s

nothing awkward about them. Because it’s one of the biggest tractor names in the world, Ferguson enthusiasts want to buy as rough a one as they can buy so that they can prove that they can bring it back to what it should be. There are tractors today that are in better condition than when they came out of the factory.

“That little tractor can drive about a farmyard and do the same work as a £150,000 tractor that you see today. It might take a bit longer but it’s manoeuvrable and it’ll do the same work.”

Ferguson came a long and complicated way from his Co Down roots, amassing many stories along the way. But so, in a way, have some of his tractors. ●

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LAW

TRANSFERRING

the farm GET TING TO GRIPS WITH NEW TAX MEASURES

Generous tax reliefs are available to the farming sector, and new measures introduced in Budget 2015 have been introduced in an effort to aid land mobility and attract younger farmers. Agricultural solicitor Aisling Meehan explains the complex new rules and the ins and outs of farm succession.

T

he report of the AgriTaxation Review launched earlier this year was published as part of Budget 2015 in October.

Some 12 new measures recommended as part of the review were introduced in Budget 2015, with scope for further new measures to be introduced in further budgets. The review focused on specific challenges in the agri sector such as land mobility, succession, and encouraging and attracting young farmers and new entrants to farming. The Finance Bill 2014 was published on October 23rd, and further clarity was given on a number of key agri-taxation measures announced as part of that review.

At the outset, it is important to highlight that if a landowner wishes to transfer a farm to a successor during his or her lifetime, there are generally three taxes that may be triggered: (1) Capital

Gains Tax, (2) Capital Acquisitions Tax (Gift Tax), and (3) Stamp Duty. Where a landowner leaves the farm under a will, there is generally only one tax triggered and that is Capital Acquisitions Tax (Inheritance Tax).

CAPITAL GAINS TAX (CGT) Transfer to a ‘child’ or ‘favourite niece or nephew’: This is payable by the person transferring the farm, e.g. a parent, aunt or uncle. The amount subject to tax will be 33 per cent of the difference in the market value of the land from the date the landowner acquired it to the date that the landowner transfers it. For example, if the farm was valued at €5,000 an acre when the landowner acquired it and it would sell now for €10,000 an acre, the uplift in value would be €5,000 an acre, which is taxable at 33 per cent.

Tax relief from CGT – Retirement Relief: However, an important relief called

Retirement Relief can be claimed, which reduces the CGT bill to nil in the vast majority of cases. In order to claim Retirement Relief, the person transferring the farm must be (1) 55 years of age or over, and (2) have owned and farmed the land for ten years prior to transfer. Even so, the landowner can let the land for up to 15 years (or 25 years for transfers on or after January 1st 2015) and still qualify for Retirement Relief provided that the landowner owned and farmed the land for ten years before he/ she first let it.

A niece/nephew can be regarded as a child for tax purposes in certain circumstances. In order to qualify as a ‘favourite niece/nephew’, the niece/ nephew must be a blood relative and must have worked substantially on a fulltime basis in assisting the landowner with running the farm for five years ending on the date of the transfer. Tax legislation EAR TO THE GROUND 49

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LAW

sets down minimum criteria for working ‘substantially on a full-time basis’ as spending not fewer than 15 hours per week helping the landowner in running the farm. Provided the value of the farm being transferred does not exceed €3 million where the person transferring the farm is 66 years of age or over, and the person transferring the farm can claim Retirement Relief, no CGT will be payable on the transfer.

worth of agricultural assets tax-free from their parents or a ‘favourite aunt or uncle’.

In order to claim Agricultural Relief, 80 per cent of the assets of the person receiving the gift/inheritance must be made up of agricultural property after receiving the gift/inheritance of the farm.

For example, if the land was worth €800,000 and the person receiving the gift/inheritance had a house (with no mortgage) worth €200,000, he/she

LACK OF AWARENESS An aspect highlighted in the Agri-Tax Report was a lack of awareness by farmers of the generous tax reliefs available to the farming sector. While the taxation system can appear complex, with careful planning the reliefs currently available will see the majority of farm transfers passed down tax-free to the next generation. While the minister announced ‘carrot and stick’ measures to encourage more farmers

“While the taxation system can appear complex, the reliefs will see the majority of farm transfers passed down tax-free.”

Transfer to someone other than a ‘child’ or ‘favourite niece or nephew’: If the landowner proposes to transfer the farm to someone other than a ‘child’ or ‘favourite niece or nephew’, they must lease the land for a minimum of five years at a time to an active farmer in order to continue to able to claim Retirement Relief. For those landowners who have been letting the land on a conacre basis (short-term letting), they have until December 31st 2016 in order to enter into a long-term lease (minimum of five years), otherwise they may not be entitled to claim CGT Retirement Relief when they transfer/sell the land to someone other than a ‘child’ or ‘favourite niece or nephew’.

Furthermore, the landowner can lease out the land for up to 25 years where the transfer occurs after January 1st 2015 provided that each lease is for a minimum of five years, although each five-year lease over the 25 year period can be to different active farmers. Provided the value of the farm being transferred does not exceed €750,000 (or €500,000 where the person transferring the farm is 66 years of age or over), and the person transferring the farm can claim Retirement Relief, no CGT will be payable on the transfer.

CAPITAL ACQUISITIONS TAX (CAT) This tax only applies if the farm is being transferred for less than the market value of the farm, e.g. as a gift or inheritance.

This is payable by the person being gifted or inheriting the farm. The amount subject to tax will be 33 per cent of the market value of the land on the date of the transfer/inheritance. However, a ‘child’ or ‘favourite niece or nephew’ can be gifted up to €225,000 worth of assets tax-free from a parent or a ‘favourite aunt or uncle’.

Tax relief from CAT – Agricultural Relief: However, if the person being gifted the farm qualifies for Agricultural Relief he/ she can be gifted the equivalent of €2.25m

would qualify for Agricultural Relief. As announced in Budget 2015, for transfers from January 1st 2015 a further condition must be satisfied in order to qualify for Agricultural Relief. The person receiving the gift must be an active farmer, i.e. they must spend not less than 50 per cent of their time farming the land for a period of six years from the valuation date of the gift/inheritance. If he/she cannot meet this requirement, they can still qualify for the relief provided that they lease it for at least six years to an active farmer.

STAMP DUTY (SD) This is payable by the person to whom the farm is transferred. The rate of stamp duty on non-residential land is currently 2 per cent.

Tax relief from SD – Young Trained Farmer Relief: If the person receiving the farm is under 35 years of age at the date of the transfer, has the Green Cert (or its equivalent) and is an active farmer, he/ she will qualify for the Young Trained Farmer Stamp Duty exemption, which was extended in last year’s Budget to December 31st 2015. Consequently, they should have no stamp duty to pay.

Tax Relief from SD – Consanguinity Relief: If the person receiving the farm does not qualify for Young Trained Farmer Stamp Duty Relief, they may be entitled to avail of another relief that will reduce the rate of stamp duty on non-residential land from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. Consanguinity Relief, which halves the rate of stamp duty on transfers of non-residential property between related persons (i.e. blood relations), was due to expire on December 31st 2014. However, Section 69 of the Finance Bill 2014 confirms that consanguinity relief is being extended but limited to transfers of farmland between January 1st 2015 and December 31st 2017 by individuals aged 65 years or under to active farmers. Again, the person receiving the land must undertake to farm it for five years from the date of transfer.

to lease their land long-term, farmers currently letting their land on a conacre basis have been given until December 31st 2016 to get their house in order.

Essentially, this means that if farmers have let their land on a conacre basis they are given a grace period until the end of 2016 either to sell their land or to switch to a long-term lease – otherwise they could face significant CGT bills when they transfer/sell their farm to someone other than a ‘child’ or ‘favourite niece or nephew’. Additionally, for those persons being gifted/inheriting land, they have until December 31st 2014 to avail of the old rules for CAT Agricultural Relief whereby they need only satisfy the ‘Farmer Test’ – otherwise they will have to undertake to farm the land themselves or lease it out to an active farmer for six years from the valuation date in order to avail of CAT Agricultural Relief. ● Aisling Meehan is a solicitor, chartered tax adviser and qualified farmer specialising in agricultural law and taxation. Email aisling@agriculturalsolicitors.ie

Disclaimer

This article is intended as a general guide only and professional advice should be sought in all cases.

This paper was compiled on the basis of information available on November 10th 2014. While every care is taken to ensure the accuracy of information contained in this article, the author and/or Aisling Meehan, Agricultural Solicitors does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions howsoever arising.

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c.135 acre Residential Farm Ideally suited to; Stud Farm, General Equestrian, Tillage / Drystock or Dairying

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CREDIT UNIONS

WHERE

Credit Due IS

Credit unions play an important role in rural communities all over Ireland.

But after an up-and-down few years for the institutions, and with more and more financial transactions being conducted online, is the local branch in danger of extinction? Dean Van Nguyen reports.

T

he credit unions’ influence on Irish society is undeniable.

Visit most areas around the country and you’ll see the impact of its savings and loans services, which fund everything from small infrastructural work and new cars on the road to education and family holidays.

Additionally, many local credit union branches provide a valuable centre of the community – a place that lets customers discuss their financial big picture while simultaneously giving back, not only through loans with competitive interest rates, but funding community initiatives such as local sports teams and charitable causes.

Like all financial institutions, it’s been an up-and-down few years for the credit union movement, with the economic collapse biting at the organisation hard. Coupled with the recent trend of customers migrating online to conduct their finances – a movement that has been highly encouraged by other institutions such as banks and An Post – there are questions surrounding the viability of keeping all local branches open longterm. But the organisation is determined to keep the physical outlets in the community, and insists they will remain a pillar of their business model.

“There’s 500 individual credit unions in Ireland. That means we’re in every parish, every community, every town,” says Ed Farrell, acting CEO of the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU), which represents 374 branches. “A very big percentage of the population of this country are members, so they save money and also borrow money. Banks have been closing

down branches and have been retreating from wanting to lend money to people.

It’s often the only place in a town or village that’s open for people to save or to borrow money from.”

As manager of the Castlerea & District Credit Union in Castlerea, County Roscommon, Martin Lonergan has seen the influence the institute has on their 5,500 members, who currently have savings of e21 million in the branch. “In terms of our importance in the community, we make loan finance available to the people at competitive interest rates,” says Lonergan. “We offer a saving service to members where their funds are secure and there are other services out of that that we can also offer members like foreign exchange, insurance. The loans and saving would be the big thing really, and particularly making loan finance available to people at competitive interest rates.”

According to Lonergan, the organisation is particularly strong at engaging with customers person-to-person – a trait he has noticed is important to the branch’s members. “If staff just talked so that person can allay their fears or sort out their query, I think it’s important,” he says.

MERGERS While the credit union is incredibly resistant to closing outlets, the network has undergone a series of restructures that have seen some branches merge with others. Restructuring board ReBo was established at the start of last year to facilitate and oversee the restructuring of credit unions to support their financial stability and long-term sustainability.

While ReBo’s assistance is purely

voluntary, it has overseen a number of small local offices being absorbed into larger branches. This has seen the disappearance of some offices, though credit union figures are bullish on the topic, insisting there has been no disruption of service.

“There are examples where a small credit union might decide their members would be better served by merging with a bigger credit union, so you might have a small town credit union or a rural credit union deciding to merge with a bigger

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CREDIT UNIONS

one in the county town,” explains Farrell.

“But any of those examples that we’ve seen, the premises has stayed open and the service has remained in the local community. It has probably enhanced the service because the bigger credit union in town might have house insurance and car insurance services. They might have foreign exchange for people that need some sterling or some dollars. So if anything, we see the experience and the service improving by leaving the premises

out in the rural community even if they do merge with a bigger credit union. So we see it as a plus, as it were.”

A DIGITAL WORLD The credit union movement is vocal about seeing its traditional, staffed outlets as being essential to the organisation – a contrast to some other financial institutions, which have been making active steps to reduce the amount of business conducted in branches by

encouraging customers to migrate online.

According to Farrell, the organisation will continue to cater to people who wish to go in to do their financial planning and budgeting face to face.

“Unlike the banks, we see the bricks and mortar branches staying,” he insists. “Credit Union is all about a people-to-people service, not like the banks who have been closing down branches and trying to force people to do things on the phone or computer. We see our branches staying open.”

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CREDIT UNIONS

“Many businesses in Ireland have been badly affected by the downturn in the economy over the last six years but hopefully Ireland has now turned a corner and things are starting to improve.”

Anne Marie McKiernan, Central Bank Registrar of Credit Unions

Being from a small community that values its credit union office, Lonergan sees the tangible benefits a functioning office has on the community. “It’s very important that the presence is kept in the town of Castlerea, that the credit unions’ presence is here,” he says. “There’s certainly a place for internet banking in most people’s lives, but there’s also a place for the human touch and I think that’s where the credit union wins out over the likes of the mainstream banks that are getting far more into machines.”

Farrell is quick to state, however, that the credit union will move with the times by offering electronic payment options to those who seek them. “If cash and cheques, the traditional methods by which people transacted their finances by are going to change, we’re going to need to get the credit unions to change [with them]. It’s an opportunity and a threat.

It’s an opportunity to get us onto the electric payments. Electric payments are that bit more complicated so the threat is that we don’t convince every credit union to get onto electronic platforms, and we have a subsidiary company doing these payment projects for us, trying to get the credit unions onto this platform. So we’re working hard with that company to try to

encourage as many of the 500 credit unions as possible to get onto the electronic platform, which’ll work side-by-side with their physical branch office where their staff are sitting 30, 40 hours a week in the traditional service offering as well.”

THE FIGURES Farrell’s assertions come on the back of an Irish Times report that savings and membership are on the rise and arrears are continuing to fall. In fact, credit union arrears fell by 17 percent for the 12 months to June 2014. However, there was also a decline in lending levels flagged as a concern.

As the Central Bank’s Registrar of Credit Unions, Anne Marie McKiernan is responsible for regulating the credit union sector in Ireland. The registry has built the regulatory framework aimed at protecting credit union members’ funds and the overall sector. While McKiernan acknowledges that Ireland’s wavering economy has meant many branches are finding themselves operating in an uncertain and difficult environment, she says work is being done to create a sustainable, long-term business model.

“Any plans should be realistic, financially sound and sustainable into

the future,” she says. “This may involve shared services models, voluntary link-ups or amalgamations aimed at strengthening financial positions, achieving economies of scale and operational capabilities to enhance existing services and provide new services to members.

“Many businesses in Ireland have been badly affected by the downturn in the economy over the last six years, but hopefully Ireland has now turned a corner and things are starting to improve.

The economic environment continues to be challenging for credit unions and many will have to change to enhance and strengthen their position.”

Work is being done behind the scenes to ensure the long-term viability of credit unions – in fact, just before Ear To The Ground went to press McKiernan announced a raft of proposed new rules for the sector, including new saving and lending limits and reserve ratios, and a consultation process has begun.

Meanwhile, in local branches around the country it’s business as usual. Having survived the recession, taking a few knocks along the way, they are keen to stress to customers that they are ready to lend money to help drive communities into the future.

“We’re financially very strong, with our service exceeding the Central Bank’s requirements,” says Lonergan.

“We haven’t required one cent from the Central Banks. We’ve stood up on our own two feet, if you like, and come through it. Yes we’ve had to take hits along the way, but we’ve come out the other side financially strong. We’ve lots of money to lend to people and the biggest challenge to us is to get that money out on loan.

We’re really well positioned financially to take that on if you like.”

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11/12/2014 15:27

BEEKEEPING

Bee-cons hope OF

The plight of the bees is well documented, but there are things we can do to help boost bee and pollinator populations, from beekeeping to beewatching. Valerie Jordan reports.

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BEEKEEPING

I

reland is home to 101 different bee species. In 2006 the Red List, an internationally recognised method for assessing the conservation status of a species, identified that a third of our bees are threatened with extinction.

Bees have huge economic and ecological importance: it’s estimated that they are responsible for pollinating one third of the world’s food supply, and the decline of bees is a problem worldwide.

In Ireland, habitat loss and fragmentation are the main reasons our bees are struggling, but there are things we can do to support and boost our existing species.

BEEWATCHING Dr Una Fitzpatrick of the National Biodiversity Data Centre says that the Irish Pollinator Initiative was established to collect the data required to drive pollinator conservation.

“We are like a Central Statistics Office for plant and animal information; we track where things are and how they’re changing. The Irish Pollinator Initiative is trying to track the species that are most at risk of extinction. We want to know exactly where they are, or if the situation is improving year-on-year.”

The Irish Pollinator Initiative is largely a “citizen science” project and it’s reliant on the volunteering public. It has different bee-saving schemes, the largest of which is the Irish Bumblebee Monitoring Scheme.

Participants in the scheme agree to take a fixed-route walk once a month from March through to October, and record the different bumblebee species they see.

“That data from across the country helps us see what’s happening with bumblebees – whether they’re increasing or decreasing.

The Bumblebee Monitoring Scheme is really important because it tells us what’s happening with the more common species,” explains Una. Response to the scheme has been good, but more volunteers are needed. “People have been incredibly generous with their time. There is a learning curve at the start: we run free workshops, we give out a bumblebee identification guide, and we provide as much help as we can, but it does involve learning the different bumblebee species.

“We know bee species aren’t in a great position, but what is positive is that we know what we need to do to protect pollinators into the future. The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan will be published next spring with a five-year plan from 2015 to 2020 to protect our pollinators,” says Una. BEEKEEPING Honey has been used by humans for centuries due to its culinary and

TOP: A solitary bee. Photo: L Lysaght BOTTOM: A great yellow bumblebee. Photo: Dara Stanley

medicinal properties. Egyptian pharaohs were buried with it; the Greeks thought it one of the foods of their gods. Today it’s as useful as ever for cooking or curing ailments. In Ireland we are heavily reliant on imported honey, but there is a huge opportunity for us to produce our own honey and, in doing so, to promote healthy honeybee populations.

One of Ireland’s best known beekeepers, Philip McCabe, says that interest in beekeeping in Ireland is booming: “In the last few years, beekeeping numbers in Ireland have doubled. That tends to happen during times of economic depression. We’ve got about 3,500 registered beekeepers in Ireland, maybe 500 or 600 in the North. It could be far

bigger and we could produce a huge amount of honey in comparison to what we import.”

Philip suggests that anyone interested in beekeeping join their local association and attend a beekeeping course. “Get an idea of what the business is about. The beekeeper will give you a bit of a help – we mentor new members all the time.

“If beekeeping is for you, you just need somewhere to put your hive. You can put a hive anywhere. A honeybee only collects nectar, pollen, propolis and water – there’s nothing in your house that’s of interest to a honeybee. I know people in Dublin with three or four hives in their back garden, and all those gardens in the vicinity benefit from the pollination in that area.”

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FAR LEFT: Bombus lucorum. Photo: Tom Cuffe NEAR LEFT: Bombus hortorum. Photo: L Reed BELOW: Getting involved with the Irish Pollinator Initiative on field trips and workshops

Philip estimates the kit needed for a beekeeper costs a few hundred euro, but it’s a once-off cost. Neither is beekeeping a laborious activity, he confirms: “The least disturbance you give your bees, the better. Sometimes people kill their bees with kindness by opening their hives too often. I open my hives five, six, maybe seven times a year – no more than that. If you understand the business you let them get on with it, but you need to know what you’re doing.”

2014 was a good year for honey, which is strongly influenced by the weather, but the real importance of bees is their role as pollinators. A crop of honey is a sweet bonus.

GARDENING FOR GOOD It’s not difficult to do a little something to help pollinator populations – even if you can’t commit to beekeeping or beewatching. A few small adjustments in the garden can make a difference.

Experts suggest leaving your lawn uncut to allow dandelions, clover and bird’s-

Worker bees

foot trefoil to grow. This mightn’t be a popular measure with the garden-proud, so consider leaving a small bit uncut.

Biodiversity is key: plant a wide range of flowers and lots of different colours.

Ensure that something in your garden is flowering throughout spring and autumn. Early spring in particular is a difficult time for bees, so plant things like bluebell, crocus, daffodils, hawthorn, rosemary, and trees like hazel and pussy-willow for early pollen.

Fuchsia, lavender, marjoram, heather and sunflower bloom in the late summer and autumn months.

Choose varieties with simple open blooms: flowers with extraneous petals may lack stamens and nectaries, or they may be obscured within the bloom. Avoid the use of pesticides, and consider a bird bath or pond, as bees need water to drink and cool the hive.

We also need to protect our hedgerows.

In recent years in Ireland our hedgerows have been over-cut, resulting in a loss of habitat and food for bees.

Urban beekeeping has grown in popularity in recent years, partly in response to falling population levels of honeybees globally. The luxury department store Fortnum & Mason, in London’s Piccadilly has bee hives on its roof, and sells its home-grown honey.

The roof of New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel is home to some 360,000 Manhattanite bees and atop the Opéra Garnier buzz Parisian bees. And if London, New York and Paris can do it – so can we. AIB opened Ireland’s first ever apiary in a commercial building on the roof of the sixth floor of AIB Bankcentre in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. The Chairman of Boyne Valley Honey, Malachy McCloskey approached the bank for help with the project aimed at increasing the population of bees in the country. The new apiary is home to 200,000 bees, and approximately 20 jars of honey will be harvested from each of the four hives. Not only will the bees benefit, but so will flowers and trees within a five kilometre radius of the hives; bees will travel as far as Howth, Phibsborough and Stilorgan in their forage for nectar. Malachy said the bank worked as a fantastic location for the apiary: “AIB Bankcentre is an ideal space as the roof is a perfect height, and the bees will be able to forage for nectar and pollinate the nearby parks and gardens.”

Some other big businesses in Ireland are expected to open rooftop apiaries next year.

Useful links

pollinators.biodiversityireland.ie www.irishbeekeeping.ie

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Malachy McCloskey, Boyne Valley Group President; Simon Scroope, Head of Corporate Banking, AIB; Philip McCabe, President of the European Commission of Apimondia and Kevin Power, beekeeper.

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26/11/2014 09/12/2014 13:02 12:08

FARM SAFETY

DEATH

& INJURY

on the farm: CRISIS POINT AGAIN?

It’s yet another dreadful year for fatal and serious injuries in Irish agriculture. A general lack of real action on the ground and a lack of training in the skills needed for modern farming continue to take their deadly toll. The situation is in fact so bad that a tougher enforcement approach is clearly needed, along with possibly considering developing sectorspecific regulations and even compulsory training to improve safety standards. Pat Griffin, Head of Farm Policy at the Health and Safety Authority explains.

Pat Griffin, Head of Farm Policy at the Health and Safety Authority

T

he headlines are coming thick and fast: this year there has been a long series of high-profile and shocking fatal incidents on Irish farms, and sadly the statistics (or more correctly the ruined lives) are there to prove the point. Our sympathy goes out to all involved, and it looks set to be the worst year ever for farm deaths, with 27 deaths at the time of writing.

Why is this, and what can be done? Pat Griffin, Head of Farm Policy at the Health and Safety Authority, is at the coal-face of accident prevention in agriculture. He and his colleagues are working tirelessly to educate, inform and provide the practical advice to farmers to help them work safely. After 25 years of promoting safety on farms the HSA knows that there is no simple solution and that it is clearly very difficult to achieve change. It is felt that a major part of the problem, the roots, lie in the tradition of farming and are deepseated and cultural.

“There are other well-recognised potentially dangerous occupations in the country: construction work, the chemical industry, mining, quarrying, the use of explosives and that type of thing,” he explains. “However, we don’t see the same rates of fatal and serious injuries in those sectors compared to what we have in agriculture, where there seems to be an acceptance of risk, an acceptance of injury and even workplace deaths as part of farming life.”

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more money available for safety, and that children and the elderly who make up half of the deaths on farms are unlikely to be found in these other workplaces. “There’s some truth in all of those differences,” says Griffin. “However, we would pose the question: do we often just use some of these differences as convenient excuses for what’s happening out there?

“Because we would say that many of these sectors also involve self-employed people. There are lots of self-employed people in construction, in mining, in quarrying. Many of them self-supervise:

A FRUSTRATED NOTE Certain questions need to be asked: as in other high-risk sectors, will farmers do a daily pre-use check on tractors, loaders, teleporters and other machinery, and put things right before the machine is put into use? As in other high-risk sectors, will farmers identify the particularly risky jobs they do, plan a safe way of doing them and follow safe systems to the letter? As in other high-risk sectors, will farmers commit to maintaining equipment and keeping children away from risk, off tractors and off farm machinery, all of

The phrase ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’ springs to mind. “We have done huge amounts of work, provided huge amounts of guidance and advice, and there are huge numbers of people now committed to trying to improve the situation, but sadly we find the same injuries and deaths happening year-in, year-out.”

One might hope that the younger generation are more safety-conscious, but Griffin says that’s not necessarily the case. “If you’ve grown up on a farm where your father has been very safety-

FATAL ACCIDENTS ON THE FARM

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

20

10

22

22

20

16

2014

27

* * At time of press

2008

SOURCE: HSA.IE

they don’t have someone looking over their shoulder; they have to follow strict rules and look after their own processes.

Many of them don’t have excess money to spend on safety either. So we have to look at and consider carefully what the more critical differences are between what people are doing in those other high-risk sectors and what’s happening in agriculture.

“From inspection experience across all these sectors, occupational safety and health seems to be given far more time, effort and priority. You can’t work in the mining, chemical or construction industries if you don’t give top priority to safety.”

They have fewer accidents because they identify what the risky activities are in their businesses, they take action to reduce the risk, and put considerable effort into controlling any remaining risk. Training is fully accepted as a basic requirement for the job, and children are not allowed in or near any work activity or machinery in any of these locations. “We need to consider if we can apply some of those principles to farming, given that half of our farm deaths involve children and elderly farmers and most of the deaths involve the use of tractors and machinery,” says Griffin.

which would make a huge difference to general farm safety?

But perhaps training is the trump card: there’s lots of it available, but it’s not being taken up to the extent necessary.

Griffin sounds a frustrated note.

“The HSA, along with the member organisations of the Farm Safety Partnership, have probably never done as much work on farm safety as has been done over the last five years. Inspectors have carried out more inspections than ever before; about 3,000 inspections per year.” He and his colleagues issue legal enforcement notices, give written advice and in only a handful of cases over the last 25 years have resorted to prosecution.

He stresses that “in spite of all this activity and the huge levels of awareness on the ground, little is really changing on the ground; certainly the death rate is not reducing as many of the serious risks remain. We see the same accidents year-in, year-out; the same circumstances which lead to them and the same causes.

Many farmers don’t see safety as being a critical part of how they operate their farms. We will again be calling on the farming community to apply a pro-active approach to farm safety, but wonder is anyone really listening.”

conscious and did things properly, aware of and managing the critical risks, you’re probably going to be a much safer farmer.

But if you’ve grown up and your father has taken chances like operating machinery without the PTO fully guarded, gone into the bullpen without considering his safety or a safe means of escape, left slurry tanks open and unprotected, you will more than likely grow up and do the exact same thing and take the same risks.

“Farmers who work and take risks themselves should ask themselves: would they be happy if they saw their son or daughter doing it the exact same way that they are doing it? They’re putting themselves at risk and are actually creating a cycle of risk for the next generation.

On top of that they are also putting the farm enterprise at risk, because if they are badly injured or killed, trying to keep the business going is hugely difficult for those left behind when there’s such a loss on the farm.”

One thing that does have an effect on farm safety is a fatality; a serious injury in one’s community. David Meredith of Teagasc has researched the location of fatal accidents in Ireland, and Griffin notes that his research seems to indicate that a horrendous fatality in a community

62 EAR TO THE GROUND

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tends to get that farming community to work safer for a period of time.

Unfortunately, time passes and people go back to how they always worked: how their parents worked, and how they learned to do the job in the first place.

COMPULSORY TRAINING? “We have years where we have 24 or 25 deaths – and 2014 looks like being the worst on record,” reports Griffin. “That is generally followed by a year where we have a significant reduction to 12, 13, 14 deaths. And then it goes back up to the higher numbers again. So we need to stop this cycle of spiking in fatal accidents where we have huge increases, followed by levels dropping off, and then huge increases again. We need to establish a sustained and sustainable reduction by ensuring that risky farm work is fully assessed and that systems are developed for the more dangerous jobs that are commonly done on farms so they can be done safely.”

With so many accidents taking place, could compulsory training be on the horizon? “I think so. if we continue to do what we are doing, providing lots of advice and information and encouragement to farmers to make safety a priority and it doesn’t happen, then the question has to be asked: what will actually make that happen? In the construction industry we have a dedicated set of safety regulations; the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Construction) Regulations. All the high-risk sectors have a dedicated set of regulations that set out absolutely critical things that the person in charge of an enterprise in that sector has to do and they generally set out training requirements.

“We are actually looking at that scenario, of having to draft such a set of Agriculture and Farm Safety Regulations, if nothing is going to work.

That will actually make it legally binding for certain things to happen on farms.

The representative organisations would

say that the last thing they need is more regulation and we would certainly prefer not to have to consider that option. It would be far preferable to try to get the industry to move on its own and do things rather than force things. But the advising and encouraging approach in place now for over 25 years hasn’t really been successful and we may need to consider other approaches.”

Griffin’s frustration is borne out of concern: he’s listened to too many griefstricken parents and families, read far too many fatal accident reports, and says that amputee or paralysed farmers are a familiar sight in rehabilitation clinics. “Farmers really have to face up to this one. While there are huge numbers of variables that influence farm safety such as the weather, the availability of help, the cost of inputs, the uncertainty with markets and price for outputs, it really boils down to the need to take personal responsibility – it’s shocking what’s happening out there and things need to change however we do it.” ●

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Aisling Meehan BA & ACC, AITI, FETAC (AGRI)

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26/11/2014 09:07

ADVERTISING FEATURE

Septic Tanks OPTIONS ALWAYS AVAILABLE

David Moore of LPF Waste Water Treatment systems explains the state of play with septic tanks following recent regulatory changes. bill through the letter box the next day.

In my opinion you need not be worried.

Remember, there are always options available to you: solutions that will suit you and your site. It is still very important to choose the right system and percolation area for you. Don’t be pushed into doing anything you don’t want to do, especially if you feel it does not make sense. I have seen more houses buried behind a hideous raised percolation bed because they have been told by an engineer that that is their only option. Remember, there are always options.

WHAT’S THE STATE OF PLAY WITH SEPTIC TANKS UNDER THE NEW REGULATIONS? The main change in recent times to the regulations is the registration of your septic tank. We found that 95 per cent of people we talked to have registered their tank but there are still small percentages that have been afraid to, a lot due to some confusion with inspections. Inspections seem to be happening where the risk to waterways is at its highest for now, and not whether you have your tank registered or not. So we would recommend you register your tank, even if it is the most recent or something from the stone ages. There are very serious problems with pollution in certain areas of the country where nonfunctional septic tanks are causing serious

WHAT KIND OF PROBLEMS ARE YOU FINDING WITH PEOPLE’S SEPTIC TANKS? The biggest problems by far are systems badly fitted and designed. I come across people every day who have paid large amounts of money for their new system only to find that it is not exactly what it says on the tin. No matter what certification comes with a particular treatment system there is no substitute for continuous testing. I have seen systems not in the ground for six months failing when tested. If you have any smell off your tank it generally means it is not working. If you have an old block and plaster septic tank and you think it’s fine because you have never had to empty it, think again I’m afraid – generally it is leaking raw sewage to the waterways. damage. The largest problem we find is systems not being able to cope with waste from the washing machine and the likes.

The common feeling is that if the toilet flushes there is no problem. Especially if you have a well, I would urge you to get your tank inspected and serviced regularly. You might find that small changes to your system may save you thousands in the future.

ARE SEPTIC TANK OWNERS WORRIED THESE DAYS? I would have to say yes. People are terrified of the dreaded inspector. This man they don’t know – they don’t really know what he wants, they don’t know what he is going to say and most of all they are not sure if they are going to get a massive

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Visit us today at www.septictanksireland.ie EAR TO THE GROUND 67

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It wasn’t until November 2010 that I read about the Mature Students Open Evening in UCC and I came along to see what I could see. I had my challenge, my Everest, and so I began to plan. What to study? I had always liked English so that was my first choice; what else? I mulled over it constantly, checking the college website picking one subject then another and then another. Fast forward to November 2011 and I am again at the Mature Students Open Evening and still trying to decide which subjects to take. There, I met a current student who talked to me about Politics. I liked it; I had my second subject. On September 24th 2012 my climb up Everest began. I finally decided to study English, Politics, Philosophy and Sociology. My experiences in college have been very positive and I’ve made some wonderful friends. Embrace it! If you run into difficulty reach out, we are all there to support you!

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TEAGASC

Squeeze RECRUITMENT

THE BAN BITES AT TEAGASC

The public sector embargo on recruitment and promotions is having a severe impact on the services delivered by the Agriculture and Food Development Authority Teagasc, writes Rachel Murray.

D

emand for Teagasc’s services is at an all-time high but the government’s embargo, which has been in place since 2009, is seriously impacting on the State body’s ability to provide advisory services and education programmes.

Overall, Teagasc have lost about 500 staff members: at their peak they had 1,500 employees, and this number is now down to under 1,000. Teagasc says that the biggest impact

on staffing numbers is due to the age structure in the advisory service, as staff are older and management are unable to replace retired staff.

In 2009 Teagasc had 420 frontline staff – that number is now at 220, a significant drop. Part of the decrease is also due to the suspension of the REPS scheme provided by Teagasc, and a number of contract staff not having their contracts renewed.

More than anyone, one person who knows the effect the embargo is having is Professor Gerry

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TEAGASC LEFT: Professor Gerry Boyle, Director, Teagasc RIGHT: Tony Pettit, Head of Education Programme, Teagasc

Boyle, Director of Teagasc. “There would have been a strong expectation that we would have been involved in the delivery of the GLAS programme, as we were in the delivery of the REPS scheme, but we can’t recruit staff to deliver that programme so we are looking at lining up with a strategic partner to deliver that service in the first instance to about 15,000 of our own clients. That’s a new departure and probably a sensible way to go, under the circumstances.”

The embargo is also having a significant impact on Teagasc’s ability to retain staff, as the organisation is unable to promote its employees. Six key researchers have left the organisation, including former Head of Food Science Paul Ross and fertiliser guru Stan Lalor. This is due to some being offered more lucrative jobs elsewhere, and Teagasc cannot offer promotions to encourage employees to stay.

The embargo on promoting staff is causing big problems for State organisations like Teagasc who are dependent on highly skilled staff: “In an organisation like ours, you need very technical staff. When we lose a specialist staff member we are unable to fill that position with other employees as they may not have the specialist qualification needed.

“This arises especially in research, but it can also happen in our advisory service because of different geographical situations. For example, I spoke to a group of farmers in Donegal last week; they represented four discussion groups, very dynamic dairy farmers from the Finn Valley area. Their advisor is due to retire in a couple of months and they are very worried about what is going to happen to their discussion groups. Unfortunately, a lot of the areas where we are having a problem are also areas where we expect significant growth in milk production,” says Prof Boyle.

Another area where the embargo is causing difficulty for Teagasc is the delivery of its education programmes.

Education staff numbers are down by 25 per cent since 2009, and Teagasc are unable to replace staff who are on leave either. In the same period, student intake has doubled.

A measure that offers young farmers a 25 per cent top-up on the EU singlefarm payment if they have agricultural qualifications has resulted in significant interest in further education, says Prof Boyle. Applications for the Teagasc distance education Green Cert and the regional part-time Green Cert have increased threefold to 1,500 applicants.

The incentives for farmers under the age of 40 was introduced as part of the 2015 to 2020 CAP reform proposals allowing a young farmers’ scheme to be introduced in the EU member states in 2015.

Having a Green Cert is also one of the conditions of stamp duty exemption on the transfer of a farm to a son or daughter.

According to the Head of the Education Programme in Teagasc, Tony Pettit, “farmers eligible for the scheme will get a payment of e60 per 50 hectares of land for a five-year period.

“We have three times the normal applications for what we call distance education Green Certs; that probably has put a big boost for demand, but even if you took that away demand for full-time courses in the college is as high as ever. What we are really having is increased demand on an already high level of demand.”

When asked about whether the 2015 budget will make any improvements to the education service delivered by Teagasc, Pettit says it is too early to tell. “We have to look at the details of the budget and what it will mean for Teagasc in terms of the allocation of grants and aids. We have got sanction to recruit up to 20 additional temporary education staff to deal with the big increase in green cert demand. We are hoping, like every other organisation as we move into next year and the year after, there will be some flexibility in the recruitment of staff.”

Director Gerry Boyle believes that after six years with an embargo in place it is time to start looking at a smarter way of dealing with the staff problem. “We were encouraged by what the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan

“Six key researchers have left the organisation including former Head of Food Science Paul Ross and fertiliser guru Stan Lalor.”

The Green Cert refers to a list of agriculture courses or agricultural science courses that qualify a person as a ‘trained farmer.’ With Teagasc, one must obtain a FETAC Level 6 Advanced Certificate or a FETAC Level 6 Specific Purpose Certificate in Farm Administration to achieve a Green Cert.

There are many ways to obtain one of these qualifications with Teagasc, including full-time education in a Teagasc college or part-time in one of the 12 Teagasc regional education centres. It takes a minimum of two years to complete the training and the content gives graduates the skills to run a farm business.

Howlin said in the budget. There was a reference to lifting the embargo and perhaps replacing it with a staff embargo by an expenditure cap, which would make more sense as it would seem to suggest that agencies like ourselves would have choice in relation to how we manage our staffing situation within an expenditure constraint.

“That would mean that we would have choice if we save money because people leave the organisation through retirement; we can use those resources to either hire people in areas where we identify need, or perhaps use to promote staff. It gives you flexibility.” ●

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

IRELAND’S NE W AGRI COMMISSIONER

takes

office

Commissioner Hogan becomes the second Irish Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION REPRESENTATION in Ireland would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Phil Hogan as he takes office as Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

Commissioner Hogan is the second Irish member of the European Commission to be responsible for agriculture. The Kilkenny native takes over an enormous portfolio that accounts for almost 40 per cent of the overall EU budget, or e60 billion per year.

The work by an Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney to secure agreement on the reform of the CAP during the Irish Presidency of the Council in 2013 was acknowledged by Commissioner Hogan as having helped pave the way for an Irish nominee to the Commission to be considered as a potential candidate for such an influential portfolio.

The reformed CAP reflects the differences between eastern, northern and southern Europe and represents a balance between these regions. Implementation of the CAP will be up to each individual member state, and Commissioner Hogan has said that he hopes that the people who are getting up early and going to bed late after working hard all day are the ones who will reap the rewards.

Food production is an area that will be high on the agenda as Europe will have to fulfil its responsibility to feed itself.

Coming from his role as Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Commissioner Hogan is very aware that looking after the environment is a key factor in any food production plans and that sustainable food production is essential to ensure food security for all citizens.

Rural development is also an area that Commissioner Hogan will be prioritising.

The next round of the LEADER and the Rural Development Programme (RDP) in particular will emphasise job creation in rural areas. The Commissioner has said that he would like to see the money that is provided

for these schemes to be used in a more effective and productive way, cutting out administrative costs and prioritising the projects.

Other issues that will be to the forefront of Commissioner Hogan’s agenda will be TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), Russia’s trade ban and its implications, food-chain equity for producers and processors, and climate change.

Commissioner Hogan took office as part of the Juncker Commission on November 1st and said he was “very excited about the challenges ahead.

Agriculture will have to play its full role in delivering jobs and growth, especially in the rural economy.”

For more information on agriculture and rural affairs in Ireland see the website of the European Commission Representation Office in Ireland here: www.euireland.ie You can visit us in person at: European Union House, 18 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 E-mail us: eu-ie-info-request@ec.europa.eu Call us: (01) 634 1111 Follow us: Facebook - @EUIreland Twitter - @eurireland EAR TO THE GROUND 71

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OPINION

Happy Out Is happiness high on your life’s agenda? Deputy Editor Conor Forrest asks whether we’d all be better off living in rural Ireland – and his answer is an enthusiastic “yes”.

P

erhaps the most popular (or at least the most played) anthem of summer 2014 was Pharrell Williams’ Happy, a catchy tune extolling the positives of happiness.

Many of us have probably found ourselves singing along to the lyrics at some point, without really giving any thought to the concept other than trying to figure out the meaning of a “room without a roof”.

But does happiness have a place in modern Ireland, as we emerge from a brutal recession? And is it something other than the size of your income, or material possession?

URBAN OR RURAL? Apparently, it is. The root of happiness in Ireland is a little more specific according to some recent research – ideally, you need to be over 65 (or aged between 15 and 24), and living in rural Ireland (a family and the opportunity for social interaction helps too).

That’s according to recent research

by UCC economist and lecturer Dr Edel Walsh. Walsh analysed data from the European Social Survey, and in particular the responses from Irish people. As part of the survey, participants were asked to rate their life satisfaction on a scale of 0-10. “There were a few things that we would talk of in terms of significance. The income variable was surprising because it had quite a small effect on a person’s life satisfaction,” Walsh explains.

“That would conform with a lot of the literature in that area, but it was interesting to see that in the Irish context.

Unemployment also has a huge negative

effect. The over 65 category was positive; [they are] happier by a point over people in their 40s. The rural finding was interesting as well – the definition of that variable is people who live in a country village or a farm or home in the countryside. That was found to also improve your life satisfaction.” Walsh herself lives in the countryside, and points towards a strong sense of community and increased amenities as some of the positive aspects to life in rural Ireland.

This viewpoint is bolstered by a study carried out by the University of Exeter in the UK over the course of 17 years. The study found that living in a greener area (even in an urban area) had a positive effect on the lives of the families that participated in the research. Dr Matthew White of the European Centre for the Environment and Human Health found that participants reported higher life

satisfaction and lower rates of mental health difficulties when living in greener areas. This was after the researchers took into account various changes in income, employment, marital status and health.

According to the OECD’s Better Life Index, 9 per cent of Irish people feel that they lack access to green spaces or recreational areas. Tarmac and concrete, it would seem, are no substitute for grass and trees.

WEIGHING THE OPTIONS So should we all pack up and move to a small village or the heart of the countryside? Do the benefits outweigh the challenges? Sure, the air might be cleaner (ignore the intermittent slurry spreading), the view more spectacular, the nights quieter and the stars brighter.

But many would point to the challenges of rural life – issues with travel and relying

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OPINION

on personal transportation, the closure of services like schools, Garda stations, shops and post offices. There can be spotty broadband coverage at best, and lower levels of employment, causing people to search for jobs further and further afield.

When faced with this, an array of housing options, amenities like large supermarkets, cinemas, theatres and shopping centres make the larger urban areas an attractive alternative. If one closes, there’s always another to fill the gap.

But the gap between urban and rural Ireland isn’t as huge as one might think.

I live in the countryside. At night, the loudest sounds are the insomniac cattle several fields away. Farm machinery seems to pass up and down the road as often as cars, and a motorway has diverted much of the traffic from my area. And yet just two minutes’ drive away is a shop, clothing retailer, motor factors, hardware shop and

a mechanic.

The nearest town is ten minutes away.

A JJ Kavanagh bus passes along the main road every hour or so. We’re not as isolated as one might think. Then there are the beautiful views over fields, hills, lakes and streams, the calm and serenity, the quiet roads where a traffic jam means a herd of cattle crossing from one field to the next. It’s hard to be claustrophobic out here. As one resident of Laytown, Co Meath put it: “Our broadband is terrible, our roads are the last to be gritted in bad weather, the bus service doesn’t stop anywhere useful but one of the very best things about living in the back end of nowhere is the sense of space.”

The world today is a smaller place, and it’s not necessarily a case of choosing one over the other. You can work in Tallaght and arrive in the truly striking environs of Blessington in under 30 minutes.

15 minutes’ drive in any direction will take you from Limerick’s city centre to sweeping hills and fields. The same goes for the rest of Ireland’s urban areas, maybe even more so. Perhaps if the challenges of rural life are met, the pendulum will swing in the countryside’s direction: if we achieve investment and infrastructure to reverse the trends of closing businesses and services, if we create jobs for youths who would otherwise depart, if we make the rural lifestyle an increasingly attractive option for people in modern Ireland.

In the end it comes down to choice and values. There’s no arguing that urban living isn’t convenient. And that’s what modern life is all about. It’s about what we want, and how fast we want it. But when you’re older, will you look back fondly on how you quickly could pop around to the local Tesco for a pint of milk and a pound of sausages?

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Business BUY & SELL

T

there’s been plenty of hype where the milk quota is concerned. Even so, it could be the story of the year.

There’s plenty more to talk about too, whether it’s the technology that can allow a farmer bid on livestock from the field, the science that could make blight a thing of the past, or how longer lifespans are affecting Irish farms today.

Business news Milk quota Farm genetics guide GM potatoes Archaeology

76 78 82 87 9

Longevity and farming Christmas trees Third-level education Beef farm technology Forestry news

94 11 15 17 112

EAR TO THE GROUND 75

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NEWS

COMMERCIAL

News

BUSINESS ROUNDUP BUSINESS NEWS Dairymaid is a new, completely natural, 100 per cent Irish dairy spread, made in Cork using the finest West Cork cream from free roaming, grass-fed happy cows. West Cork’s temperate climate provides a lush, grassy landscape, which means their cows are fed the best grass and consume an extremely natural diet all year round. The pristine and natural landscape gives cattle access to an abundance of wildflowers and herbs that gives their milk a unique flavour. Dairymaid only use 100 per cent West Cork cream in all of their dairy spreads, bringing a taste of one of Ireland’s most spectacular regions to your table. Dairymaid Premium, Dairymaid Light and Dairymaid Buttery are available in Tesco, Dunnes Stores and Super Valu stores nationwide.

Lely Leads Yellow Revolution During the Yellow Revolution event in Maassluis, Holland in September, Lely unveiled a new revolutionary continuous baling system called the Lely Welger CB Concept. The Lely Welger CB Concept is a groundbreaking variable baler that does not need to stop or slow down when baling any type of crop. The new concept is revolutionary as it ties a bale whilst simultaneously starting the next one. A true continuous baling concept, a true Yellow Revolution! As soon as the desired bale size is reached a transport system moves the bale within the belt to the extended back of the baler. This creates room for a new bale to start immediately in the front. After the first bale is tied by the net wrap system, the tailgate will open and drop the bale on the go. The baler returns to its compact position, ready again to finish the bale that is being made in the front. During this continuous process, a cleverly engineered belt buffering and tensioning system ensures a consistent tension on the belt resulting in high density bales. For more information about the Lely Welger CB Concept please visit www.continuousbaling.com

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NEWS

Equine Science

at UL continues to prove popular Equine science programmes at the University of Limerick provide students with knowledge and skills to pursue a variety of challenging professional roles within the Irish and international equine industries. The university offers three programmes: n Bachelor of Science in Equine Science (CAO Code: LM093) n Certificate in Science (Equine Science) (CAO Code: LM180) n Diploma in Science (Equine Science) All programmes place a strong emphasis on an integrated three-strand approach and include laboratory and lecture-based modules in equitation, business and science. The Degree in Equine Science is four years in duration and all students register to take common science, business and equitation modules in the first two years of the programme. These modules build a strong foundation in the scientific and business-related areas of the horse industry. All students undertake cooperative education placements for a period of up to eight months. These placement opportunities allow students to apply and develop their academic skills while simultaneously gaining a professional experience either at home or abroad in selected sectors of the horse industry. All students get to develop research related skills in an area of equine science of interest to them.

All projects are managed under the guidance and supervision of faculty. This year one of the Equine Science graduates, Ms Gillian Johnson, received worldwide recognition when she won first place as the global winner of the international Alltech Young Scientist Competition.

Further information can be obtained from Dr Bridget Younge, Course Director at (061) 213447 or Bridget.Younge@ul.ie, and Alastair Sutherland at a.sutherland@ ul.ie. Alternatively visit: www.ul.ie/~ls

Virginia Show Society has built an integrated rural resource centre The concept for an integrated rural resource

Virginia and adjacent to Virginia College. In

centre evolved from an open space conference

addition to the annual agricultural show the

held by Virginia Show Society in November

showgrounds is used for a variety of com-

2006, titled ‘Meeting Needs: The Virginia Show

munity purposes, featuring a covered events

Society and the Future’. The project was further

hall (41x24m), meeting and computer rooms,

informed by a feasibility study for the develop-

farm shop and a craft area. A fully equipped

ment of an integrated rural enterprise centre

community kitchen is bookable on hourly

in 2008.

or daily rates, a local heritage museum is

The Virginia Agricultural Show Society has

currently being developed while a café area

identified key objectives for the town and

is suitable for social gatherings. This project

environs.

is funded by Cavan Monaghan Leader to the

n To provide for social and educational needs

tune of €500,000.

through the provision of social infrastruc-

Virginia Show Society is made up of 200-

ture/facilities and to encourage local com-

plus members, and draws its membership

munity co-operation

primarily from the south-east Cavan area,

n To promote interest, education, knowledge and pride in our rural heritage n To encourage economic activity in the area

and is very much cross community in nature.

The committee, which now spans in some cases three generations of the same family,

with a strong focus on the development of

has successfully run Virginia Agricultural

agri-tourism/business

Show for 73 years. The Show Society are

n To develop facilities and infrastructure

committed to the long-term economic and

which will service the needs of the annual

social development of the greater Virginia

Virginia Agricultural Show and other local/

area and are keen to find alternative sources

national organisations.

of income for both members and local

Virginia Show Centre Ltd is based at the

businesses alike, in the changing face of Irish

showgrounds located to the rear of Main Street,

agriculture.

LC PACKAGING REVEALS NEW VENTILATED BAG LC Packaging have recently introduced their Vento fabric mesh with easy lift potato FIBC. Air flow is increased substantially through Vento mesh bags when compared with the standard ventilated bag. The company has said that temperature remains lower and more consistent in the Vento mesh bag than in standard ventilated bags. This all leads to a better quality and healthier potato with increased shelf life. The highly efficient Vento mesh is coupled with their easy life FIBCs, which alleviate the need for pallets when FIBCs are transported, while the easy lift loops reduce labour involvement when moving the bulk bags.

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DAIRY

Ready Set Go LIFE AFTER MILK QUOTAS

With the current milk quotas being removed in April 2015, Irish farmers will be free to produce as much milk as they want. But is this a real opportunity in a world of increased dairy consumption, or have the benefits been overstated? Christine Murray reports.

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DAIRY

I

reland has operated under a dairy quota scheme since 1984. The quota system, originally intended as a temporary measure, is finally on its way out and due to be removed in April 2015. The strong performance of the sector even under quotas has led many to be extremely excited about its potential for growth.

Despite the quota limiting production, the dairy industry is still one of Ireland’s biggest sectors, with export sales in the region of €3 billion during 2013. Ireland is also home to three of the four largest infant formula companies in the world, and produces almost 10 per cent of global supplies.

Zoë Kavanagh, Chief Executive of the National Dairy Council, is optimistic about the imminent demise of dairy quotas. “This is an exciting time for the dairy sector, with real opportunities for growth and development on the horizon,” she says. According to the council, most farmers involved in dairying will seek to expand their operation in some manner.

The Department of Agriculture’s Food Harvest 2020 programme also sets the ambitious goal of a 50 per cent increase in dairy output by 2020.

A READY MARKET There is every indication that farmers increasing their production will find a ready market for their milk, as global consumption of dairy products is rising at an exponential rate. According to the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society (ICOS), world consumption is increasing by 15bn litres a year, which is almost three times Ireland’s current domestic production. This is driven by an increasing middle class in emerging economies, and their moving towards a typical Western diet which includes a lot more dairy products.

Writing for Teagasc’s Today’s Farm, Tom O’Dwyer (Head of Dairy Knowledge Transfer at Teagasc’s Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation

Programme) argues that the introduction of EU milk quotas in 1984 put a halt to the fastest growing sector in Irish agriculture.

In the decade between joining the EU and the milk quotas being introduced, milk production levels in Ireland doubled. In contrast, it’s stayed relatively static since.

It is a growing market, and one that countries without quotas have been able to leverage better than Ireland. Ireland’s milk production was 5.2bn litres in 1984, and rose to roughly 5.4bn litres in 2013.

In New Zealand, which has a similar enough dairy system to our own but no quota, dairy production rose from approximately 7.6bn litres to 19bn litres in the same period. New Zealand is now one of the world’s biggest exporters of dairy products, with one third of international trade. When milk quotas were introduced, Ireland had somewhere in the region of 68,000 dairy farmers. This has decreased to approximately 18,000 in the present day.

The Irish Dairy Board accounts for around 60 per cent of Irish dairy exports to more than 100 countries. It owns a number of brands, including Kerrygold and Dubliner Cheese. Kerrygold has recently launched a new product line aimed at the emerging middle class in China, unveiled by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Simon Coveney during a trade mission to the country. It has also expanded operations in a number of locations including the UK, USA, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. In April 2014 the company announced that it would be investing e30 million in its Mitchelstown plant, increasing capacity to 50,000 tonnes and creating 50 new jobs.

The company intends to use Ireland’s reputation as a pure, green island with family farms to market the product successfully abroad.

ARE FARMERS PREPARED? To fully tap the potential of export markets, however, many farmers will need to look at their operations. The quota

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DAIRY

order to prevent Irish farmers following the same path, banks have stipulated that a farm plan must be submitted to obtain a loan, along with records from a farm’s profit monitor or other source. Maximum loans are around €4,000 per cow.

Currently, Irish dairy debt is estimated to be less than €1,000 per cow.

did more than just reduce the amount of milk that was produced within Ireland; it dictated the structure of the Irish farming industry. Unable to expand their farm in terms of milk production, many farmers chose other avenues. This is a model that needs to change in a post-quota economy.

For example, Irish dairy farmers have a rich and plentiful supply of grass that provides much food for cows: Irish cows spend an average of 312 days outside grazing, according to Kerrygold. However, it’s been estimated that around half of Irish dairy farms could improve their grass by better reseeding and use of fertilisers. One alternative way to increase dairy output is to buy feed, but this can be expensive and could potentially risk losing the ‘natural Irish’ label that the IDB uses as a unique selling point. The most cost-effective way for Irish farmers to increase milk production is to increase grass growth and get the right type of cows to graze on it.

Reseeding is an expensive endeavour, which is probably why it has been so overlooked in recent years. But if farmers – and, by extension, the Irish economy – are to benefit from quotas being lifted, then the first step is to make the existing herd as economically efficient as possible.

Statistics from the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation show that there has been a massive drive to increase herd size with increases in dairy breeding. It’s estimated

that cow numbers have increased by as much as 150,000 in the last three years as farmers prepare to expand operations in 2015. More cattle also means increased feed and labour costs. That is why it is so important to have a robust economic model before considering expanding a herd of cattle.

DODGING DEBT TRAPS Farming is a volatile business and depends on many external variables to be profitable. As a result, no farming activity (including dairying) can take a large amount of debt. Some countries, such as Holland, Denmark and New Zealand, have high levels of farm debt. Ireland needs to be careful if it is to avoid following the same template. Some liquidity is needed to expand Ireland’s dairy sector, however, and evidence so far suggests that a sensible approach is being taken.

According to Donal Whelton, an AIB agri-adviser, the average Irish farmer borrowed less last year than their counterparts in other countries. Loans taken out by Irish farmers account for roughly 5 per cent of their total assets: in other EU states, it can be closer to 50 per cent.

In New Zealand, many dairy farmers saw rapid expansion – and got into a lot of financial problems as a result. Loans of around €10,000 per cow were normal. In

CHALLENGES The quota being lifted creates many opportunities, but it also presents many challenges. One of the difficulties for Irish farmers is attempting to predict the economics of an unknown situation.

In 2009, after all, a drop in milk prices threatened a lot of dairy businesses.

Farmers now need to have a model that can withstand external shocks, and nobody can predict with any degree of certainty how much milk will cost in 2015.

As Ireland has an abundance of grass, we are not as reliant as other countries on grain to feed our dairy cows. Bad grain harvests elsewhere can cause their milk prices to increase, making Ireland the cost-effective option for dairy products.

Conversely, when grain is cheap, Irish farmers often find it more difficult to compete.

Also, a growing demand in other countries does not automatically mean that Irish farmers can tap into it. China is spoken about a great deal, and definitely has potential as a market. 11bn litres of liquid milk are consumed in China each year, after all. But China already has a tariff-free agreement with New Zealand, which it does not have with the EU. To fully capitalise on the removal of quotas, organisations exporting Irish dairy products will need to use the country’s unique selling points to win over new markets, the Government may well need to open doors with free trade agreements, and farmers themselves will need to maintain quality while scaling up production.

Some of the most successful dairy farmers in Ireland are those who have herds with between 50 and 80 cows that are managed with family labour. This model has the potential to increase production by as much as 25 per cent with a few extra cows and – crucially – no increase in the number of workers needed. Hiring an extra labour unit is expensive and can eat up the profits from between 50 and 60 cows, so farmers should think carefully about scaling up.

The lifting of the dairy quota is an opportunity but it is not a licence to print money. To capitalise fully, farmers will need to contain their costs of expansion while maintaining quality – and also balance risk in what remains a volatile global market.

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08/10/2014 09/12/2014 09:52 12:19 20-Nov-13 10:23:18

GENETICS

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO

farm genetics Research scientist Dr John Bradley charts how a 19th century Austro-Hungarian monk’s discovery has led to a more profitable Irish cattle herd.

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GENETICS

A

Photo: Roger Jones

lthough farmers across Europe have been breeding their cattle and crops selectively for centuries, it was a 19th century Augustinian monk who first realised the power of genetics.

Friar Gregor Mendel used his monastery’s pea garden to study the size, shape and colour of pea plants and their seeds. This unassuming research allowed him to identify the root of how individual traits are passed from parents to offspring, a term now named in his honour as Mendelian inheritance.

When we talk about “Mendelian inheritance” we are referring to the transfer of genetic material, DNA, from parent to offspring. Centuries of research since Mendel’s humble beginnings in his pea garden have shown that many characteristics of plants and animals are determined by small packages of DNA called genes. Thus, we now know that there are genes associated with how large a tomato grows or how often you can milk your cow.

In the 150 years since Mendel our understanding of genetics has developed enormously, and modern farmers have now gained more precise control over the characteristics of their crops. With the help of Teagasc, we are moving away from older and more costly methods of crossbreeding.

Modern genetic manipulation now means that desirable traits can be selected, while undesirable ones can be left behind.

Today’s farmers therefore save both time and money, as well as increase crop yields for an ever-expanding food market.

Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are organisms that have been altered through the addition or removal of individual genes. Human beings have been living in harmony with genetically modified food since the beginning of agriculture, in the form of disease-resistant crops or bulkier cattle for better meat production.

Although sensationalised media reports sometimes paint GM food as unnatural “Frankenstein food” that may pose a EAR TO THE GROUND 83

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GENETICS

risk to our health or the environment, the reality is much less sinister. In fact, modern genetic modification techniques allow farmers to better control desirable gene inheritance in a fraction of the time traditional methods would have required.

SUCCESS STORY: IMPROVING THE HOLSTEIN-FRIESIAN In 2013, for the first time in our history, Irish food and drink exports approached e10 billion and the dairy industry accounted for almost a third of this. Dairy exports in 2013 amounted to e3bn, up 15 per cent from 2012. The majority of Ireland’s milk production and calving is seasonal, with over 75 per cent of milk production occurring from April to September, while 79 per cent of calves are born between January and April.

The Irish dairy herd is dominated by the Holstein-Friesian breed, which makes up 63 per cent of the national herd. Our farmers favour this breed because of its exceptional milk yields, a characteristic arising from breeding programmes in the US. When we consider that Ireland has a limited calving season of only four months, we can see that improving our herds’ reproductive success would have a knock-on gain in the milking season and allow farmers to boost their profit margins. Until recently, any potential gains to be had from cross-breeding the Holstein-Friesian with a more fertile breed were disregarded by farmers wary of tampering with the Holstein-Friesian’s milk yield. But all that changed when the Holstein-Friesian was crossbred with the New Zealand Jersey.

Although the New Zealand Jersey has slightly inferior milk production properties compared to the Holstein-Friesian, it does have superior reproductive qualities and tends to live longer. A recent Teagasc study showed that the offspring of the Holstein-Friesian and New Zealand Jersey,

Photo: Roger Jones

called F1, had the characteristics required to improve the overall profitability of the Irish herd.

The study revealed that the quantity of milk produced by the F1 crossbreed was marginally lower than the HolsteinFriesian, but this issue was compensated for with higher fat and protein content.

The results also showed a modest improvement in turnaround time from calving to conception compared to the Holstein-Friesian. On top of this, the significantly hardier body condition of the F1 means lower maintenance costs for the farmer. When we add up the findings of this study, it’s clear that the benefits far outweigh the negligible disadvantages of crossbreeding these two strains. It’s no wonder then that New Zealand has already begun adopting this breed, with the F1 making up 33 per cent of their national herd.

CURRENT OPINION ON GMOS The use of genetics to develop new breeds such as the Holstein-Freisian cross provides farmers with new options for the future. Genetics is a powerful tool

Comparison of HF, J, and F1 Herds Holstein-Fresian

New Zealand Jersey

F1

1.4 1.2

Score Relative to HF Herd

1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 Milk Yield (kg)

Milk Protein g/(kg)

Body Condition

Calving to Conception (Days)

for the modern farmer, and however Ireland proceeds, the decisions made by this generation are likely to have very real and long-lasting consequences for future generations.

As with any new technology, a decision needs to be made on how and when it should be implemented. Those in favour of GMOs will urge for an early adoption to take advantage of any financial gains that can be made. Those who favour caution will prefer to wait and see how GMOs pan out for other nations.

Teagasc is very clear about its stance on the issue of GMOs, making sure to distance itself from the commercial profit-oriented organisations and instead favouring unbiased publicly funded research. Dr Ewen Mullins, Senior Research Officer of the Crop Science Department at Teagasc has said that “we can’t rely on research done outside of the country by groups that are either for or against the technology”.

Ireland has a lot to gain from probative research into GM cattle and food crops, but we need to be sure we are acting on the best available evidence. Overall, Teagasc is cautiously optimistic about the possibility of introducing GM crops into Irish farms.

Genetic modification will play an ever-increasing role in the growth and development of Irish agriculture. Ireland is fortunate to have a unique blend of traditional farming experience and a highly developed scientific sector, allowing us to integrate old and new expertise to our benefit. The ability to skillfully handle GMOs will mean we can find tailor-made solutions to the various challenges facing the Irish agricultural sector.

We can only speculate on what Mendel would make of these modern advances – but perhaps he’d agree it’s not exactly easy peasy work.

CHRISTINE MURRAY REPORTS ON GM POTATOES: SEE PAGE 87

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GM FOODS

THE

Fight Blight AGAINST

Genetically modified crops have long been a controversial subject in world agriculture. Christine Murray talks to Dr Ewen Mullins, Senior Research Officer at Teagascâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Oak Park research facility, about the status of GM crops in Ireland and attempts to produce a blight-resistant potato.

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P

otato blight and GM foods: two separate subjects that can arouse strong opinions, whether it’s because of the Famine’s legacy or global fears about a science-fiction dystopia. Combining the two topics is Teagasc’s Oak Park Research Centre in Co Carlow, home to a successful potato breeding programme – and its connection with Ireland’s most enduring crop was strengthened when the facility became involved with the AMIGA Project, which attempts to develop a blightresistant potato.

AMIGA (a simpler way of saying Assessing and Monitoring the Impacts of Genetically modified plants (GMPs) on Agro-ecosystems) involves 22 institutions across 15 European countries and has been funded under the EU’s FP7 programme, which bundles all researchrelated EU initiatives together under a common roof. The project receives no commercial funding.

As part of the project, researchers at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands have developed a potato that is blight-resistant by integrating genes from wild potatoes in South America along with conventional European potatoes.

machinery and good quality land.

Moreover, keeping the potato blight-free is getting increasingly difficult. Mullins elaborates: “Our potato crops at the moment receive on average between 15 to 18 sprays every year of fungicides...

I have never met a farmer who likes to spray. Obviously, he’s trying to make an economic return on his crop, and every time he goes into the crop to spray he’s losing money. The high-end guys could spend e50,000 to e60,000 a year on fungicide sprays.”

Spraying so much is also causing blight to become resistant to existing products. More aggressive blight strains are developing, such as ‘Blue 13’ and ‘Pink 6’, which is a cause of concern for researchers and farmers alike. EU legislation coming into force over the next number of years aims to reduce the types of crop protection that farmers are permitted to use and the amount of times crops can be treated.

By contrast, planting potatoes imbued with a natural resistance to blight limits the need for fungicidal spraying. “If you mix things up by using these resistance genes, taken from wild potato species that produce antibodies that seem to be quite durable, that will give you a barrier against blight. Then, if you add on a one or a twospray programme at certain times in the crop you raise the challenge even more.

So you’re basically beating that blight with two sticks rather than one.”

“Those wild potatoes have become very adept at resisting blight, because they’ve been exposed to blight for so long. We’ve only had potatoes here since the mid1800s, which is a blip on the evolutionary timescale,” explains Dr Ewen Mullins, Senior Research Officer at Teagasc’s Oak Park research facility.

“One of the aspects we’re looking at in the AMIGA project is what’s called IPM, which is Integrated Pest Management,” says Mullins. “That’s a concept being driven by European policy, and it’s a very valid concept whereby you don’t rely on a single mechanism to control a disease: you mix it up a bit. It makes sense because if you rely on a single system, eventually it’s going to break down.”

Teagasc’s role in this programme involves evaluating IPM as a means of controlling blight, seeing what effect these genetically modified potatoes have on the organism that causes blight itself, and the effect that the potatoes would have on soil microbes.

PRACTICAL IMPACTS This research is potentially very important for Irish potato farmers. The potato is already an expensive plant to produce because of the need for specialist

EUROPEAN POLICY The fact that the AMIGA project is being funded by FP7 shows that it is a matter of some interest for the EU. “It’s difficult to see where it’s going from a political perspective at the moment because it’s an ongoing debate in the European Parliament as well, and our national policy is driven by European policy in that regard,” notes Mullins. “There is an

“You don’t rely on a single mechanism to control a disease: you mix it up a bit. It makes sense because if you rely on a single system, eventually it’s going to break down.”

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GM FOODS

you want and are rid of the ones you don’t want. Naturally enough, surveys have shown much more acceptance among the general population for cisgencics, as the practice is merely accelerating a natural process.

ongoing discussion, quite a vociferous discussion, in Europe, because there are policies there to allow GM crop cultivation as long as there’s no negative environmental impact, or no risk to human or animal health.”

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), based in Italy, is charged with evaluating the benefits and risks of GM foods. “They’ve a very comprehensive protocol for GM crops. The companies say it’s too comprehensive and too bureaucratic. The NGOs, the Greenpeaces and Earthwatch, say it’s not comprehensive enough, so trying to steer a middle cause up there is a difficult course for those people at EFSA. It can take six or seven years to get a GM line authorised through EFSA because of the process involved in getting all of that data together,” Mullins reveals.

Some countries, such as the Scandinavian nations, are more willing to experiment with GM crops than others. The EU are therefore considering

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Perhaps the most troubling impact of GM adoption for farming communities has been the issue of intellectual property. In the USA, for example, there is mounting opposition to agri-biotech companies who have obtained the patents for many of the processes involved in manufacturing GM seeds – and aggressively protect these intellectual property rights by mounting legal action against individual farmers.

In the case of the AMIGA project, however, the concern about intellectual property is less relevant. The researchers responsible for developing the blightfree potato see it as beneficial science, and do not have profit-driven motives, argues Mullins. The potato itself was bred

“The traditional understanding of GM is that you take a gene from a jellyfish and put it into a plant or stuff like this. A jellyfish is never going to mate with a plant so that’s called transgenics because you’re going across the genus.” whether decisions on GM policies should be taken at a national level rather than on a pan-European basis.

GM IN IRELAND Here in Ireland, anxieties and fears about GM foods are well established, and there are no commercially-grown GM crops.

This does not mean, however, that we are free from GM elements in our food chain.

“We import a lot of GM animal feed: we import over a hundred million tonnes of animal feed every year, which underpins our cattle and dairy and pig and chicken sector. So we’re not a GM-free island. In addition to that, we have a lot of industries in pharma and biotech which are very reliant on GM as well,” he points out.

In this context, scare stories about GM foods seem somewhat peculiar. While Mullins cannot speak comprehensively about the AMIGA project while it is still ongoing, he does stress that there are no reported dangers to be worried about beyond the risks that are already inherent in our food chain. “There is no information yet to show a negative impact on food quality relative to what we already eat from normal crops – which require a lot of sprays and stuff like this,” he says.

A criticism commonly levelled at

genetically modified crops is that changing the structure of plants will impact the ecosystem. While agreeing with this view, Mullins points out that agriculture has an impact on the ecosystem by its very nature. In particular, he argues, current methods of combating plant pathogens – such as repeated crop spraying – have an impact on ecosystems too.

TRANSGENICS AND CISGENICS Mullins also stresses that different types of GM research involve different approaches.

“The traditional understanding of GM is that you take a gene from a jellyfish and put it into a plant or stuff like this,” he says.

“A jellyfish is never going to mate with a plant so that’s called transgenics because you’re going across the genus.” This is very different from the cisgenics being advanced under the AMIGA programme.

Cisgenics involves artificially transferring genes which could theoretically be passed between different species in a natural setting. The blight-resistant potato, for example, has been achieved by genetically combining two different forms of the same species.

Breeding potatoes in this manner would take a great deal longer to get to the point where you have got the genes

during a ten-year project by the University of Wageningen, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture.

“It’s a publicly funded project, there is no IP on this. They’ve made it very clear on their website and in many communications that basically it’s public funds.” If a blightresistant potato is released based on the project’s findings, it will be released to breeders and farmers across Europe without licensing restrictions. “It’s a nice model and it’s completely different to what people would traditionally expect it to be, and that’s the way it should be: if it’s public funds [financing the research], then it’s owned by the public really,” says Mullins.

This, of course, depends on the results of the research being carried out right now. At the end of the current three-year programme the research findings will be sent for independent scientific peer review and afterwards released publicly. While Mullins notes that the initial research has been promising, he is quick to add that blight-resistant potatoes are unlikely to kill off blight entirely. But if ‘light-touch’ cisgencic GM research can produce a potato with a lower risk of blight, and a reduced need for spraying, then this will prove beneficial for both Irish farmers and the environment as a whole.

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ARCHAEOLOGY

Digging DEEP

The Tiger economy was an enormous boost to the archaeology sector, with new roads and developments ensuring plenty of work for companies and graduates up and down the land. With several high-profile discoveries of late, could archaeology be making a comeback? Ian Maleney reports.

W

hen the fortunes of the construction industry nosedived around 2009, many ancillary livelihoods suffered too. From van dealerships to deli workers, many people felt the loss of that business. Though their plight was perhaps overshadowed by the general doom and gloom of the industry, Ireland’s archaeologists took the hit harder than most. Without the constant development and redevelopment of the Celtic Tiger-era property market, and without the government’s road schemes, there simply wasn’t any work available for them.

However, with some signs of a recovery beginning to show, there is a sense of optimism among the archaeologists left in the field. Construction work is picking up, and with it comes the chance to dig, excavate and discover.

Indeed, there have been some notable archaeological discoveries in the last year. In September, Maeve Sikora from the National Museum’s Antiquities Division oversaw the excavation of a foot and leg bones from Rossan Bog in Co Meath. It was the second set of remains to be discovered in the bog, after a full body was found there in 2012. These latest remains were remarkably well-preserved and are now being radiocarbon dated to determine their age.

“That bog is particularly interesting for us because there seems to be so much going on,” says

Sikora. “It will be interesting to get the date for it to see if the activity is spread over a long time or whether it’s concentrated. We think it probably is over a long period of time because it was always an important boundary. It’s right on the boundary between Meath and Westmeath and probably also on a more ancient boundary as well.”

Sikora says that bog bodies are particularly popular finds with the public, with the Museum’s ‘Kingship and Sacrifice’ exhibition of recovered remains continually drawing a crowd.

“I think the bog bodies, because people can see that they were a person and the face and all the rest of it, they can see the physical traces – that captures people’s imaginations,” she says.

The National Museum’s Antiquities Division cares for what Sikora describes as Ireland’s “portable heritage – anything you can lift”. They’re usually the first on the scene when an object is discovered in a garden or on a farm, and most people who discover a potential artefact are eager to know if their find will end up on display in the museum.

Sikora is often the person to deliver the bad news: only 2 per cent of what the museum holds ends up on display. The rest is kept for research, and to preserve the heritage of the country.

WOODSTOWN WONDERS Some finds, however, are significant enough to make display a necessity. James Eogan, senior archaeologist with the National Roads Authority, has

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1

2

3

4

LEFT: The Woodstown Viking grave during excavation: the hilt and upper part of the sword blade can be seen along the left-hand side of the grave; the tip of the sword and the spearhead are visible at the bottom of the photo.

Courtesy: NRA/Archaeological Consultancy Services. ABOVE: 1. Lead weight with an attached mount containing a representation of a human head cast in glass. Courtesy: NRA/StudioLab. 2. Fragment of a dirham minted in Wasit, modern-day Iraq, mid-eighth century. Courtesy: NRA/ StudioLab. 3. Silver ingot. The deeper notches cut into the surface show where the quality of the silver was tested.

Courtesy: NRA/StudioLab. 4. Reconstruction drawing by JG O’Donoghue of the Viking buried at Woodstown. Courtesy: NRA/JG O’Donoghue EAR TO THE GROUND 91

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ARCHAEOLOGY

been involved with a significant Viking settlement at Woodstown in Co Waterford for over ten years now, and has just overseen the publication of a book collecting all the findings and reports from that site.

“Before Woodstown’s discovery, we knew from the descriptions of the monks about the Viking raids in the 9th century that the Vikings established bases in Ireland and the monks, writing in the annals, called these bases longphort – or ‘ship place’,” says Eogan. “We had these historical references to longphort, but the discovery of Woodstown gave us the first opportunity to investigate a site which is probably a longphort dating from that first phase of Viking activity in Ireland.”

Many of the finds from Woodstown are historically important, including weaponry, warrior graves and metal fixtures from boats that would have been repaired there, as well as the largest collection of metal weights – used by the Vikings in trading – ever found in Ireland.

The weights suggest that the early Vikings didn’t only raid the Irish, they also bartered and haggled with them. The time between discovery and public display of these artefacts has also been shortened thanks to Waterford city’s ‘Viking Triangle’, a trio of museums dedicated to the era.

“Often you work on these projects for so long and it takes many decades for some of the artefacts to be put on display,” says Eogan. “[With] the Woodstown material, because of its significance and because Waterford city developed the Viking Triangle in the last five years, the most significant finds found on the site can be seen on permanent public display.

“Of course they’re box office now with the Vikings show on TV – so it’s a good time to be publishing a book about a Viking site,” he laughs.

Both Sikora and Eogan talk about the increased difficulty of their work in the aftermath of pretty severe budget cuts.

Many road projects stalled over the past five years, meaning Eogan couldn’t employ archaeologists. In the museum, staff numbers were cut to the bone – there are now just four full-time staff in the Antiquities Division to cover the whole country – and those who are left find themselves putting in longer hours and covering more ground. Although there have been fewer days in the field, the museum’s team have been extremely busy cataloguing and caring for the extraordinary amount of artefacts found during the property boom.

COLLECTIVE ACTION Things have been even more dramatic in the all-or-nothing world of commercial archaeology. According to a 2013 report

commissioned by the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland, there was an 82 per cent decrease in the number of employed archaeologists in Ireland between 2007 and 2013. Rates of pay have fallen sharply and work is never steady.

To combat this, a number of archaeologists have set up a union as a branch of Unite. Matthew Seaver is the chairperson, and he says that the union is necessary to stop the companies from pricing themselves out of business altogether.

“What we’d like to do is to implement a registered employment agreement for archaeologists which will kick into place next year hopefully, when the legislation governing the agreements is updated,” he says. “We’d hope that this agreement would incorporate the wage levels that are suggested in the IAI report. We would like all archaeologists, including new entrants, to be paid the living wage of e11.65 and then we would like the rates that we suggested for the remaining grades in archaeology to be paid.”

With most archaeologists earning an average of €9.50 an hour, an increase is desperately needed to keep up with inflation and a rising cost of living. One of the archaeologists hoping to benefit from the collective action of the union is Alva MacGowan, who says she isn’t sure what’s going to happen when her current job finishes up in a couple of weeks.

“That’s quite worrying,” she says. “I’m 36 now and I can’t get a mortgage. I don’t have constant flow of work happening all the time. The rates of pay don’t reflect the qualifications that you have or the experience that you have. Companies are being put under pressure to lower their tenders for jobs because they’re desperately trying to get jobs.”

RATHFARNHAM TIME-CAPSULE MacGowan has been involved in one of the most significant excavations this year, at Rathfarnham Castle in Dublin. Formerly the home of the Loftus family, the castle has come into the hands of the Office of Public Works, who commissioned an archaeological survey of the castle’s south-west tower. Underneath a plain, paved floor, MacGowan and her team found a treasure trove of valuable artefacts – wine bottles, crystal goblets, fine porcelain from China and even leather shoes. An iron breastplate found there is thought to belong to a Cromwellian soldier. Some of the artefacts can even be traced directly to their owners, giving an intimate portrait of the lives of Dublin’s upper-class during a time of much political upheaval in the city.

“It’s hugely significant because it gives us a very good insight into how inhabitants of the castle lived their daily lives,” she says. “It’s a private household and this

An archaeologist planning the partially excavated grave. Due to the acidic soil conditions no trace of the skeleton survived. Courtesy: NRA/Archaeological Consultancy Services

kind of material can really only be compared to artefacts that have been found at Dublin Castle.”

The OPW plan to reopen the castle to the public in 2015 and many of the artefacts found there will remain on display in the building – something which MacGowan hopes will be of great benefit to visitors.

“In archaeology, we can talk about your plates and we can talk about your cutlery, we understand when we see it together, but when you’re trying to communicate with the public, you need something tangible,” she says. “You need additional aid and this material is very important for that. It’s filling in loads of gaps.”

Though MacGowan believes this is an exciting time in archaeology, a time when many discoveries are generating interest online in a far more immediate way and people are increasingly interested in tracing their histories, she’s not sure how sustainable a career it can be.

“It’s a vocation, archaeology, and it’s something you do because you absolutely adore it so that means people can pay you very little,” she says. “I don’t know if I’m going to be working in archaeology for the next few years. I’d love to – if the work was there.” ●

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LONGEVITY

Passing the

Torch

HOW LONGER LIFESPANS AFFECT FARMING TODAY A rapidly ageing population means that people in the West need to work for longer before retirement. How does this impact the farming community, who often have little pension provision and may not be physically able to keep farms operating?

Christine Murray reports.

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■ People aged 65+ in Europe: 2010 – 14% 2050 – 25% ■ Irish farmers over 70: 25% ■ Irish farmers under 35: 7% ■ Land in long-term lease: 100,000 hectares ■ Land in conacre: 640,000 hectares

E

urope is ageing rapidly, and the continent already has the highest median age in the world. This is set to increase: according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the proportion of people aged 65 and over on the continent is set to jump from 14 per cent in 2010 to 25 per cent in 2050. With fewer people of working age in the population, and more people above the old retirement line, our traditional ideas of retirement at 65 are becoming outdated.

The Irish Government’s stance on this is simple – people will just have to work longer.

The approach is logical, and similar to that of most other European governments. Working longer, however, is one thing for office workers, who are usually able to perform their jobs into older age. Farming, however, represents a very different challenge. The job requires hard, physical labour – often in difficult weather conditions. It can be dangerous, with a number of deaths and serious injuries occurring every year. Just how feasible is it for farmers to work even longer before they are allowed to retire?

AGEING FARMERS It may not be ideal, but it’s already happening.

Statistics released by the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association show that more than a quarter of farmers in this country are over the age of 70. This illustrates that there are some farmers who are unwilling or unable to hand over the reins to the younger generation. By contrast, young people are underrepresented in the farming community: less than 7 per cent of farmers are under the age of 35.

Ireland’s agricultural sector is a major engine in plans for economic recovery. The Government has set out ambitious targets for growth in its Food Harvest 2020 programme.

The programme involves doubling Irish milk production and increasing agricultural exports to 12 billion – a 42 per cent increase when compared with the average from 2007 to 2009. It also aims to add 20 per cent in value to the beef sector, among a host of other targets. If these targets can be reached, the programme would be a major boon for the Irish economy and farming in particular. But is it possible to reach these targets with the farming demographic the way that it is? A lack of physically fit young farmers will obviously make these targets harder to achieve.

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benefits. When it comes to pension provision generally, there are no express differences between the type of pension package that you would need as a farmer and the package needed by an office worker. However, farming in Ireland involves a mixture of personal and professional finances. Locking away significant sums of money in a pension is less attractive because of farming’s innate unpredictability: a bad crop or damage to an asset can often make it essential to access money to maintain a viable operation. Simply put, a farmer’s need for ongoing finance is a problem when he or she is looking at traditional financial products. Savings schemes and a varied share portfolio, which can be liquidated if needed, may be a better bet.

One obvious way for current farmers to provide for a future where they have control over their own retirement is to build their farm into as successful an

is an anomaly: in most parts of Europe very short-term letting is not common, or is even prohibited, with minimum lease periods of years rather than months.

It is hard to see the benefit of the system, as farmers renting land under such uncertain conditions have less incentive to invest in it. Irish grass, for example, is well below maximum fertility, because most grass is not being properly treated with expensive lime, potassium and phosphorus by a farmer with a longterm stake in doing so. The same principle applies to any buildings or structural work on the property. Rotation crops, such as potatoes and beet, work well within a conacre system, but most land in the current system is grassland or tillage.

ADDRESSING THE ISSUE Kieran O’Dowd, President of Irish farming group Macra na Feirme, has said that reducing the amount of land in

According to a study issued by Iowa State University, farmers wishing to retire without a designated ‘heir’ to take over the farm have five main options. The first one is to continue to operate the farm, either on a full or part-time basis, scaling back operations to focus on more enjoyable or less physically taxing work. This, however, is not really a retirement, and may prove uneconomical on small Irish holdings.

It also relies on a farmer’s continued good health. Leasing land to third-party operators on a cash or crop-share basis is another option. Thirdly, farmers can keep the farm going by hiring extra labour and taking a hands-off management role. In this way, farmers can retain rights to the land, capital and products. However, this is still not full retirement: farmers still need to make decisions, planning carefully to hire labour while still maintaining enough profit to live on. Farmers can also sell the farm outright, giving themselves a lump

“Effectively, it is a gradual sale of the farm, with the older and more experienced operator holding a reducing stake as a new farmer takes over.” enterprise as possible. Many banks see the farming sector as an area that will see long-term growth, and are willing to lend money to farmers with a solid farm plan. However, this is only useful for farmers who own their land or hold it on a long-term lease. For farmers who are renting land through the traditional conacre system, this is something that may not be possible. Even making the most of available land may be out of the question without bank loans.

THE CONACRE PROBLEM Conacre was a system introduced in the 19th century, and remains strong today. The original idea was that leasing land for 11 months would give the renter enough time to sow and harvest a crop while avoiding a legal relationship with the landowner.

The system was tremendously difficult for the individual wanting to work the land, because an educated landlord would often be negotiating with a less-educated speculator. A lack of scientific measures to check soil fertility, and the unpredictability of weather, made it difficult to guarantee profit – or even survival – for the renter.

Things are obviously different now, but the conacre system is still vastly more popular than longer leasing. Around 100,000 hectares of Irish land is in a longterm lease, compared with an estimated 640,000 hectares in conacre. In this, Ireland

conacre would be good for young farmers and would enable them to grow their business, increase output and aid the overall progression of Irish farming.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan also addressed the issue in Budget 2015, arguing that there is a profound need to give younger farmers access to land. To that end, Noonan introduced a number of measures to incentivise a shift towards long-term leasing. These include an expansion of capital gains tax relief for farmers who sell land currently on conacre or place it on a long-term lease by the start of 2016. The existing age limit of 40 for leasing relief has been abolished.

Agricultural leases to active farmers of between five and 35 years will be exempt from stamp duty. There is also going to be an extension on the relief on transfer of non-residential property (stamp duty consanguinity relief) to the end of 2017.

OPTIONS FOR RETIRING WITHOUT AN HEIR The traditional retirement in the farming community – having a family member take over the hard work of the farm while the older generation reduce their workload, take on lighter duties in the farm and take less from it – is not always an option for families today. Farming remains a difficult profession: younger, highly-educated workers often simply want to do something else.

sum but no continued income.

Finally, farmers can consider transitioning the farm to new ownership.

This involves taking in a younger farmer who is looking for land and, over a period of years, transferring more and more of the farm over to the new owner.

Effectively, it is a gradual sale of the farm, with the older and more experienced operator holding a reducing stake as a new farmer takes over. It also allows for improved efficiency and profit, with a young pair of hands driving progress. Of course, any younger farmer taken into the business under this approach would need careful vetting, and both parties need solid advice and agreements to protect their legal rights.

The farming industry is different than other sectors, and requires its own provisions for an ageing workforce.

Farming later in life risks stunting development of the upcoming farming generation, puts stress on existing farmers and could ultimately have fatal consequences. Retirement is particularly difficult for farmers who do not have heirs willing to take on the farm. Transitioning existing farms to the younger generation, and developing a system that encourages the build-up of farms as profitable longterm enterprises, will require action by individual farmers, representative groups and Government bodies.

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CHRISTMAS TREES

Spruced Up

CHRISTMAS TREE FARMING IN IRELAND

It looks like it’s about as seasonal an industry as can be – but in fact, it’s a year-long occupation that’s hard work and takes over a decade to produce each tree.

Aoife Loy examines the Irish Christmas tree industry and the debate surrounding which is more environmentally friendly: the real or the artificial tree?

T

he Christmas tree is undoubtedly the ultimate symbol of the festive season. What has become the traditional practice of adorning an evergreen tree with lights and ornaments for living-room display stems from ancient history – evergreen trees, wreaths and garlands were customarily used to symbolise eternal life by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese and Hebrews, while tree worship was common amongst pagan Europeans.

Nowadays, there is much debate surrounding how much harm upholding this popular tradition is doing to the environment by harvesting trees en masse on a yearly basis. Many environmentally conscious people believe that by buying an artifical (i.e. reusable) Christmas tree, they are helping the

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CHRISTMAS TREES

Dermot Page, Chairman of the Irish Christmas Tree Growers’ Group.

In figures:

CHRISTMAS BONUS

650,000 HARVESTED

250,000 EXPORTED

€5,500,000 EXPORT VALUE

planet by saving natural trees and forests.

On the other hand, real tree advocates argue that this is a misconception and that as most artificial Christmas trees are made from crude oil and plastic, they are causing more long-term damage to the environment.

Ireland has a steady Christmas tree farming industry. Last year the Irish Christmas Tree Growers’ Group (ICTG) estimated that 250,000 of 650,000 trees harvested here were exported, with an estimated export value of €5.5 million.

Our temperate climate, together with high levels of rainfall and free-draining soils, make for good growing conditions and Christmas trees have been produced here as a highly specialised crop since the early 1980s. Indeed, the noble fir – one of the most popular and tricky trees to grow – thrives in locations such as the Wicklow Mountains. This raises another issue: by buying an Irish-grown real tree, consumers are supporting a local agricultural industry.

A FARMING INDUSTRY The ICTG represents the body of growers, retailers and all others involved in the Christmas tree industry in Ireland, and they are strongly promoting the real tree this year with their Love A Real Tree

campaign. Grower and ICTG Chairman Dermot Page explains why they believe that the real tree is more environmentally friendly. “First of all, it’s sustainable. A plastic tree is made from fossil fuel, which is non-renewable. For every tree that we harvest, we plant a new tree. You’re not pillaging a native woodland as some people feel you might be doing in Ireland.

It’s actually a farming industry, it’s a crop effectively.”

He compares this with the plastic tree which, once disposed of, is put in a landfill where it could remain for anything up to 6,000 years before it has been broken down. “The real tree is biodegradable, so you can recycle it at your local county council recycling spot where it is mulched and put into garden mulch; you can use it as firewood creating heat, or you can plant it. Some people put it in the back garden and use it as a bird pirch, or grow sweet pea up it.”

This year, those who purchase real trees will be getting a product that has been over a decade in the making. “The tree comes from a nursery where it’s been for three or four years,” Page says. “It’s planted as a seed. The seeds for the Nordmann fir are collected in Georgia and the noble fir come from either Denmark or parts of America. The seed is planted in a nursery

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CHRISTMAS TREES

demand for all three of those and even the lodgepole pine and fraser fir, Korean fir,” Page says.

Christmas tree farms are a familiar sight in the Irish landscape.

“It’s not just shove it in the ground and you have it seven years later as a perfectly formed tree. I would be in my field every day of the year looking at the trees.”

– that could be an Irish nursery, a Danish nursery, or a German nursery. It’s there for three or four years, then it’s brought – at either autumn planting or spring planting – by the grower into Ireland.

It’s planted by hand or machine and is then tended for [at least] eight years and you’re looking at year 11 by the time the last tree is cleared off that field.”

There is a huge amount of work involved in this process, he says, including continuous fertilising, weed control, pruning, shaping, lightening off, giving a handle, and controlling leader length.

“It’s a very labour-intensive job looking after your Christmas tree,” he says. “It’s

not just shove it in the ground and you have it seven years later as a perfectly formed tree. I would be in my field every day of the year looking at the trees.”

The tree is then harvested, a process that starts around the third week of November. It is cut down, netted with a netting machine and then brought back to the yard where it is either loaded loose onto a trailer and taken to local markets, or put into a pallet with a palletising machine and taken to garden centres around the country. “The Norway spruce was probably the most popular in the ‘80s, then the noble fir took over and now it’s the Nordmann fir. There’s still a

A GROWER’S PERSPECTIVE Christy Kavanagh is a Christmas tree grower based in the Wicklow Mountains near Newtownmountkennedy, where he mainly grows noble fir. This Christmas, people will be purchasing trees that he has been tending for 14 years. “We’ve grown it in the nursery here on the farm and we’ve planted it ten years ago approximately.

That tree was already in the nursery for four years in the seed bed, so the product that we sell this year has in total been 14 years in preparation,” he explains.

His father started growing trees there in the 1950s – years before commercial growing took off in Ireland. “It’s a very tough job. It wouldn’t be a job I’d like my son to go into. It’s very hard work. I think this year, I probably took off about 20 days in the year. But I enjoy it, it’s very satisfying.

Where we work up on the farm, I can see the whole of the east coast and I can see Wicklow, the Dublin-Wicklow mountains.

A lot of the time I’m on my own and you’re at peace in your surroundings. I find it therapeutic to work.” The conifer, he says, takes a lot of carbon out of the environment in a process called carbon sequestration, another factor that makes it an environmentally friendly industry.

Irish Christmas tree growers provide trees for export throughout Europe and for the home market. For Kavanagh, while the focus is mainly on the island of Ireland, this year some of their trees are going to Denmark as well. “Because we are one of the few countries in Europe that can grow noble fir, there is a demand for the noble fir in some European countries,” Page says. “But primarily the UK is the market.

It’s on our doorstep, we can get it into the country a lot quicker than they can get it from say Denmark or Germany, and it therefore comes in as a fresher product.”

There are 300,000 Irish-grown trees for the home market, he says, and about a quarter of a million are exported. While the industry faces challenges from factors such as late May frosts and various pests, ultimately their biggest obstacle is the artificial tree.

As this is such a tough job, is it really a worthwhile use of the land? Page explains why he believes this is so. “When it was first got into in the country in the late ‘80s, it was looked upon as a waste of good agricultural land by your traditional farmer, but we feel it’s a worthwhile use of the land,” he says. “We’re creating an income for our family, for the farm, we’re creating a natural habitat for wildlife and we’re creating a product that is wanted by the market. It’s not a food source but it is certainly something that is in demand.”

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EDUCATION

Smart

CHOICES

What courses are available for those pursuing a career in agriculture? Aoife Loy examines what the best options are for farmers at any stage of their career.

E

ducation is undoubtedly important across all sectors of the economy. For agriculture, it is a significant factor in heightening the awareness of best farming practices and the future development of the sector. There are many options available both for students who want to develop the appropriate skills and education, and for adults who wish to return to education or to upskill. This will allow them to have an ultimately more rewarding career.

Betty McLaughlin is President of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors in Ireland, and a farmer and creamery manager’s daughter. She highlights the value of education in securing employment and in improving one’s choices. “You develop skills through education and the better developed your skills are, the better chance you have of moving into a career,” she says.

For students interested in studying agriculture and perhaps filling out the CAO, she advises choosing a specialised field later in their studies. “The trend is, nowadays, to take a broad course for first year and then pick, at the end of the year, which areas of agricultural sciences you

want to specialise in. That’s a very wise idea for students,” she says. To that end, she suggests the Level 8 agricultural science course at UCD as it is a very broad entry. The areas of specialisation are animal and crop production, animal science, engineering technology and food and agri-business management. When filling out their application, students can select the ‘No Preference’ (NPF) option on the CAO form and choose to specialise in second year.

In addition, Betty suggests the Level 7 course in agriculture at Waterford Institute of Technology, the Level 7 Bachelor of Science in Agriculture at Ballyhaise Agricultural College in Co Cavan, and the Level 5 Certificate in Agriculture at Gurteen College, Co Tipperary.

“They’re all very good courses; there are very good jobs from them. Graduates are being snapped up and indeed many of them are working abroad with Kerrygold and other companies manufacturing foods,” Betty says.

GREEN LIGHT FOR GREEN CERTS She also recommends Teagasc – for younger students as well as mature candidates. “Teagasc courses are excellent,”

Betty McLaughlin is President of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors in Ireland

she says. “Students can do what is similar to a PLC course in agriculture. Then, if they want, they can stay for a Level 6 course. For example, in Ballyhaise you go in on a Level 5, you would also do Level 6 and then complete Level 7 or 8 in Dundalk Institute of Technology.

You could transfer to UCD as well,” she explains.

For adults pursuing the Teagasc route, Betty suggests the agricultural green cert courses for adult farmers with no previous qualifications who are interested in further developing their skills. Teagasc also offer short-term courses in horticulture, organic farming, and artisan food. In addition, they run a network of discussion groups covering all the major farm enterprises. These groups comprise 12 to 20 farmers who come together on a monthly basis to discuss issues of mutual interest.

Betty advises all prospective students – be they young or mature – to start by contacting their local guidance counsellor, a qualified person in the school who is there to advise them. “There are also guidance counsellors available in PLC colleges of further education and working in the sector of adult education. Talk to your local guidance counsellor and seek help and advice.” ● EAR TO THE GROUND 105

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INNOVATION

BEEF FARMING

Technology INCREASING THE STEAKS Technology is becoming more prevalent in every industry, and agriculture is no different. Conor Forrest takes a long at several technological tools in use by Ireland’s beef farming industry.

W

hile beef production in Ireland has increased overall in 2014, price discrepancies have become apparent towards the final months of the year.

Figures from Teagasc have shown that beef farmers are experiencing a 22 per cent drop in income. In their mid-year outlook, published in July, the body noted that while production in Ireland had increased in 2014, a gap had arisen between Irish and UK factory prices. The report also noted that farmers selling cattle before finish were seeing less of a price drop than those who were.

According to the organisation, farmers require €4/kg to remain profitable. At the moment, beef prices are hovering around €3.70. In the UK, this price is around €1 more.

Lower prices have led to protests from farmers, including a 24-hour beef price protest conducted by the IFA in late October. The IFA’s president, Eddie Downey, pointed to a €350 gap per head between the market in Ireland and our closest competitor, the UK. “Beef farmers have had a very tough year, and with our main markets now recovering strongly they are not prepared to tolerate loss-making prices any longer,” he said.

Clearly, beef farmers will turn their attention to any innovations or developments that can help them increase their remuneration. In recent months and years, we’ve seen the introduction of technology developed for specific use in agriculture – from automatic paddock gates to drones and smartphone apps for uploading calf registration details. There are also a few clever ways for farmers to keep an eye on prices, and buy and sell more efficiently.

PRICEWATCH

Pricing is obviously of key concern for beef farmers, who will want to maximise their profits. Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Simon Coveney has launched an official Beef Pricewatch app, developed by the department for use across a variety of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Users can take advantage of up-to-date information on the average price paid for animals in 24 approved meat factories across Ireland.

While this price information is already available to the public at large, divining meaning from the figures can be headache-inducing. Now current prices for each factory are clearly displayed, while you can also peruse historical prices per kg and make a decision as to the best location for your livestock.

According to the minister, “this app takes much of the existing price information already available and makes it userfriendly. Now, at the click of a button, farmers can immediately see the prices paid for different categories of cattle in their factory of choice for the recent week. This information on prevailing price trends means that Ireland is now one of the most transparent EU member states when it comes to providing accessible information on prevailing price trends.” It’s already growing in popularity – more than 16,000 farmers were using it only three weeks after it launched.

LIVESTOCK LIVE

‘EBay for cattle sales’ springs to mind when touring livestock-live.com, which provides a handy online auction platform for selling livestock. The developers have made it as straightforward as possible – sellers sell their animals by inputting their animal details, type, ID numbers, breed, gender, location, photos and videos alongside a reserve price they will accept. On the opposite side, buyers can search for any type of animal they’re looking for, and view photos and videos of the livestock, alongside all important information.

Selling online broadens your target market, widening your reach from

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INNOVATION

Ireland to the UK and the US in some cases. If it suits, potential buyers can enter a bid which the seller can choose to accept or reject. There’s also market information available for the prospective buyer: the most traded livestock, and price changes by country, location and animal type.

Livestock Live also offers stock management facilities, a payment escrow service and auction alert. So forget that hilarious vintage mug on eBay, buy some cattle instead.

BALLINA MART

The Sligo/Mayo mart in Ballina is going down a similar route, and is the first mart in the country to provide an online bidding service to customers.

Using the Online Ringman system, bidding on cattle for sale at the Ballina mart is as easy as purchasing from Amazon or eBay. Users first have to register their details with the mart before they can use the online facility.

Once confirmed, buyers can log in to the system, and can bid as they like.

The system is in real time, with current bids coming in as they’re made.

Internet bids are highlighted in red,

“Using the Online Ringman system, bidding on cattle for sale at the Ballina mart is as easy as purchasing from Amazon or eBay. Once confirmed, buyers can log in to the system, and can bid as they like.” with buyers on-site able to see these arriving instantaneously. A visual feed of the ring means that purchasers can see the livestock they are bidding on. Buyers can also make use of a handy iPhone app – AuctionEar, a companion app that offers

audio and video capabilities.

The benefits are quite clear. Farm work isn’t a nine-to-five job by any means, and farmers aren’t always able to make each sales event. The possibility of bidding via laptop, phone or tablet means that farmers can still purchase stock from home, on the move or even if they’re out in the fields (internet connection depending, of course). Ballina’s online option also means that buyers from further afield needn’t travel long distances any more, offering savings in both time and money.

Manager Billy Loftus told us: “I took over here about a year and a half ago, and I met with a lot of groups: younger farmers, older farmers, Macra na Feirme etc. The one thing they mentioned was the possibility of using technology, and I decided to look into it. The first sale was on September 2nd – we did trial it ourselves for the three weeks before that.

We’ve got very positive feedback from all of our customers and buyers too. As the buyers have responded, we’ve tweaked several things on the system to suit them – we put in a second camera so they can see the cattle coming in, we’ve increased the quality of the visuals, and increased the amount of information, for example.

We’re very happy with how it’s going.” ●

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

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2015 will see the rollout of a new Forestry Programme covering the period 2014-2020. The draft Forestry Programme, which was submitted to the EU Commission in October 2014 for approval, consists of a suite of 11 measures with increased grant and premiums rates for new afforestation projects. The measures aim to increase forest cover and generate additional supplies of timber

Winterval is a delightful festive event for young and old, which is packed with seasonal events and activities set in unique heritage sites around Waterford City. The Winterval Festival is in keeping with a tradition established back in medieval times when end-of-year markets sprung up as social gatherings where people could enjoy a little excess before the onset of bitter weather. A festive ‘Winterval Market’ will take over the heart of the Ireland’s oldest city where 60 beautifully decorated traditional log cabins specially built for the festival will host an offering of the very best quality and range of goods in food, craft, wooden traditional toys and decorations.

Taking place from November 21st to December 23rd 2014, discover the wonder of Winterval at the spectacular free 3D lightshow at Palace Square; enjoy the spectacle of a Viking Yuletide or take a trip on Santa’s horse drawn sleigh or the magical Wintrval Express. You can also explore an amazing array at the free toy museum and meet the reindeer at the ’South Pole Enchanted Garden’, enjoy a snow fantasy in the snowglobe or meet the main man himself with a magical visit to Santa’s Grotto at the city’s medieval undercrofts.

Relax at the free kids movie screenings, be mesmerised at the free storytelling sessions and sing along with the giant singing Christmas tree filled with choirs and live

Forestry

A VIABLE, PROFITABLE LAND USE OPTION Tom Hayes, T.D., comments on the development of Irish forestry.

and wood biomass to meet the projected increase in demand from the wood processing and renewable energy sectors.

The objectives of the Programme include the establishment of over 43,000 hectares of new forests, the construction of almost

700km of forest roads and improved levels of support for the establishment and conservation of native woodlands.

I believe that the amount allocated towards the continued development of forestry in Ireland is an acknowledgement by the Government of the contribution and potential of the forest sector. I encourage landowners to seriously consider forestry as a land use option.

Tom Hayes T.D. Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with Special Responsibility for Forestry.

Winterval

IRELAND’S CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL

The ever popular Winterval Christmas festival returns for 2014.

music, or get your skates on at Waterford on Ice. If it’s entertainment you are looking for, there will be a host of theatre productions including the wonderful Waterford Panto Society’s production of Sleeping Beauty and lots more exciting activities.

This truly unique festival should be top of everyone’s Christmas list for being good this year! As well as enjoying the

Winterval treats, festival goers can take the opportunity to do a little bit of Christmas shopping, or simply stroll around the streets of Ireland’s oldest city and soak up the festive atmosphere.

Lots more exciting Winterval news and information is available on www.winterval.ie or join Winterval on facebook.com/ WintervalWaterford, Twitter @Winterval_WAT or Instagram winterval_2014 EAR TO THE GROUND 111

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

JUST OVER €113 MILLION was allocated to the forestry programme administered by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for 2015. Some €110 million of this is earmarked for capital expenditure which, in the case of forestry, includes grants for forestry establishment, the payment of ongoing forestry premiums and other forest support schemes such as the Forest Road Scheme.

State support for the forestry sector has been in place for several decades. While forestry represents an important source of income for landowners, the forestry sector also supports and creates employment and provides multiple non-economic benefits in terms of environment, climate change mitigation, recreation and tourism. The output of the sector in 2012 of some €2.3 billion is an indication of the sector’s strength and its contribution to the Irish economy.

2015 will see the rollout of a new Forestry Programme covering the period 2014-2020. The draft Forestry Programme, which was submitted to the EU Commission in October 2014 for approval, consists of a suite of 11 measures with increased grant and premiums rates for new afforestation projects. The measures aim to increase forest cover and generate additional supplies of timber

Winterval is a delightful festive event for young and old, which is packed with seasonal events and activities set in unique heritage sites around Waterford City. The Winterval Festival is in keeping with a tradition established back in medieval times when end-of-year markets sprung up as social gatherings where people could enjoy a little excess before the onset of bitter weather. A festive ‘Winterval Market’ will take over the heart of the Ireland’s oldest city where 60 beautifully decorated traditional log cabins specially built for the festival will host an offering of the very best quality and range of goods in food, craft, wooden traditional toys and decorations.

Taking place from November 21st to December 23rd 2014, discover the wonder of Winterval at the spectacular free 3D lightshow at Palace Square; enjoy the spectacle of a Viking Yuletide or take a trip on Santa’s horse drawn sleigh or the magical Wintrval Express. You can also explore an amazing array at the free toy museum and meet the reindeer at the ’South Pole Enchanted Garden’, enjoy a snow fantasy in the snowglobe or meet the main man himself with a magical visit to Santa’s Grotto at the city’s medieval undercrofts.

Relax at the free kids movie screenings, be mesmerised at the free storytelling sessions and sing along with the giant singing Christmas tree filled with choirs and live

Forestry

A VIABLE, PROFITABLE LAND USE OPTION Tom Hayes, T.D., comments on the development of Irish forestry.

and wood biomass to meet the projected increase in demand from the wood processing and renewable energy sectors.

The objectives of the Programme include the establishment of over 43,000 hectares of new forests, the construction of almost

700km of forest roads and improved levels of support for the establishment and conservation of native woodlands.

I believe that the amount allocated towards the continued development of forestry in Ireland is an acknowledgement by the Government of the contribution and potential of the forest sector. I encourage landowners to seriously consider forestry as a land use option.

Tom Hayes T.D. Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with Special Responsibility for Forestry.

Winterval

IRELAND’S CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL

The ever popular Winterval Christmas festival returns for 2014.

music, or get your skates on at Waterford on Ice. If it’s entertainment you are looking for, there will be a host of theatre productions including the wonderful Waterford Panto Society’s production of Sleeping Beauty and lots more exciting activities.

This truly unique festival should be top of everyone’s Christmas list for being good this year! As well as enjoying the

Winterval treats, festival goers can take the opportunity to do a little bit of Christmas shopping, or simply stroll around the streets of Ireland’s oldest city and soak up the festive atmosphere.

Lots more exciting Winterval news and information is available on www.winterval.ie or join Winterval on facebook.com/ WintervalWaterford, Twitter @Winterval_WAT or Instagram winterval_2014 EAR TO THE GROUND 111

ETTG_Winter 2014_Forest Services.indd 111

11/12/2014 12:13

FORESTRY

IN SEARCH OF

Ancient Roots In association with groups like the Woodland League, the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive project is seeking to preserve the genetics of the world’s ancient trees. Aoife Loy reports.

S

ome of the oldest trees still living date back thousands of years, pre-dating the Bible and the Pyramids of Egypt. Remnants of the once-populous ancient Irish oak forests can be found in areas such as the Gearagh in west Cork and the area straddling the east Clare/south Galway border – once the Great Forest of Aughty. While much has been felled in the name of development, organisations like the Woodland League are striving to reverse the eradication of Ireland’s native woodlands.

The Woodland League are involved with the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive project – a not-for-profit organisation on a mission to locate the world’s ancient trees, archive their genetics and reforest the Earth with their offspring. The project was created

by David Milarch, a Michigan tree nursery man, and their team came to Ireland in search of our oldest trees. Scientist Diana Beresford-Kroeger acted as their consultant on selecting the cuttings from very specific tips of the old tree crowns.

The team took samples from the Brian Boru oak tree, birch from the Slieve Aughties and holly and yew from Cork. “The follow-up was that the successful cuttings were sent back to Ireland and grown in nursery conditions,” Andrew St Ledger, the League’s PRO, explains. “The plan is to replant them back into areas that they were adapted to in the first place,” i.e. close to where the original host tree was rooted.

Although the League would prefer seeds to cuttings, St Ledger says that they understand the importance of preserving

these genetics. “The DNA of those trees goes back millions of years. They have been adapting and facing adverse conditions before humans existed, a time of high CO2 and low O2,” he says. “A lot of weaker plants and trees are struggling today because they don’t have this adaptability.”

This is because most trees in Ireland are farmed for timber production and are genetically weak.

Through the League, Archangel have also introduced some Californian redwoods into Ireland. St Ledger says that due to climate change, their natural environment has been drying out. Tree cuttings from the redwoods were sent to seven other countries, including New Zealand and Germany. The plan is to monitor these trees and in the event that the redwood is lost to California, the country where it best survives will receive more cuttings to ensure the survival of its DNA.

For now, this is a fledgling project – all the trees are being nurtured with a view to eventually planting them out. “The Archangel project in Ireland is a small but very important offshoot of the work of the League. It’s quite specialised and there are only a small amount of native trees that have been propagated,” St Ledger says.

“The plan is to replant them in locations they’re adapted to in conjunction with local communities we’re connected to, reforesting those areas with native trees grown from seed.” It is also hoped that by reforesting the planet with these super trees mixed into natural forests, this will help combat CO2 emissions as well as ensuring the survival of our forests. However, only time will tell whether these ancient trees will once more populate our land.

To support the work of the Woodland League, join their mailing list via the newsletter link on www.woodlandleague.org

112 EAR TO THE GROUND

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10/12/2014 12:01

Forestry is an excellent source of income for farmers and a sound investment for all land owners with: • 100% planting grants available, • attractive annual forestry premiums, • income from thinning and clearfell, and is a valuable national asset, as: • • • •

an important national resource, a raw material for industry, a wild life habitat, a positive environmental factor (water & climate change), • a renewable energy source, • an important recreational resource.

For information, contact: The Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Johnstown Castle Estate, Co. Wexford or see: www.agriculture.gov.ie/forestry

P110_Advert Missing.indd 1 233592_1C_FOREST_CMD_ETTG.indd 1

09/12/2014 28/10/2014 12:44 12:55

MAYO ADVISING, SUPPORTING & DEVELOPING MICRO BUSINESSES > We provide direct financial supports to micro businesses*.

Eligibility criteria apply. > W e advise on a range of alternative funding options available. > W e deliver high-quality training to meet the needs of your business. > We mentor you and your business with experienced experts > We create progression pathways for highpotential companies to Enterprise Ireland.

> We advise on local property solutions for start-ups and business expansions. > We organise key enterprise events. > We facilitate effective business networking. > We promote entrepreneurship education in the local community.

CORE TRAINING PROGRAMMES 1. START YOUR OWN BUSINESS: Helps participants to understand the basic principles of establishing and managing a business.

(6 x 3 hour sessions)

2. MANAGING YOUR FINANCES: Enables you to retain proper financial records within your business and meet all necessary legislative and revenue requirements.

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ALONG WITH A SUITE OF OTHER TRAINING PROGRAMMES If you are thinking ‘I could do that’ but you’re not sure how, talk to Mayo Local Enterprise Office.

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COMMERCIAL PROFILE

DEVELOPING THE

Food Sector

R

ecent years have seen a huge shift in attitudes and awareness among the Irish towards food.

Traditional flavours and products are being rediscovered and people are being drawn towards locally produced natural and wholesome foods.

At the heartbeat of the Wild Atlantic Way lies Co Mayo, a very special place with over 1,230km of rugged coastline, clean waters, magnificent scenery and untamed wildness, with great food and hospitality at its core. Premium quality, hand-made, natural, wholesome, organic, artesan and delicious are words that come to mind when describing the food products that are produced in the county, from artesan producers to large-scale food industries.

Over 70 producers have been identified around the county with products ranging across the spectrum including seafood, sausages, meats, farmhouse cheese, farmhouse butter, pestos, sea salt, hedgerow-infused vinegars, chocolate, nougat, natural still and sparkling water, green tea sparkling water and craft beers to name just a few.

And many are award winning.

The synergy between the food sector and other sectors such as tourism is also strong: food is often incorporated into initiatives and events. Take the Gourmet Greenway, a food trail along the Great Western Greenway (a 42km walking and cycling route between Westport and Achill Island), created by Mulranny Park Hotel and local food producers to showcase the areasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; artisan foods. Or the strong presence of food producers at festivals such as FĂŠile na Tuaithe at Turlough House and the Westport Festival of Food and Music.

In line with this are consumer trends,

IN CO MAYO

with food provenance an important factor in consumer requirements. This may in part be driven by the expectation that local food is fresher, but also the recent recession has made shoppers increasingly keen to support local producers.

Communities in Mayo are coming together to support each other and to develop and promote the food sector.

Many shops are stocking local produce and hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars are offering local produce. Groups such as Slow Food Mayo and Chefs of Mayo shine a new light on chefs and locally produced food in Mayo.

Recognising that the food sector is of major economic importance and plays an important role in supporting employment in smaller urban and rural areas, Mayo County Council, through the Enterprise and Investment Unit and the Mayo Local Enterprise Office,

supports the development and promotion of the food sector in Mayo. A business adviser has been allocated the specific role of assisting in the co-ordination, development, promotion and growth of the food sector in Mayo.

A number of supports are available to the food sector through the Mayo Local Enterprise Office such as training, mentoring, networking events and access to finance (see advertisement). The Enterprise and Investment Unit at Mayo County Council also supports a wide range of initiatives that showcase and promote the food sector in Mayo and encourage the use of Mayo food produce in its own events or sponsored events.

So if you are in Mayo, check out the local food produce. Just one local food product in the shopping basket or at the restaurant table can make a difference.

Or if you are thinking of setting up or expanding a food business in Mayo contact the Mayo Local Enterprise Office to check out the supports that may be available.

Useful websites www.mayo.ie www.localenterprise.ie/mayo

EAR TO THE GROUND 115

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11/12/2014 14:56

Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;GORMAN meats

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We would like to wish all our customers a Very Happy Christmas and look forward to seeing them in 2015.

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07/11/2014 15:32 09/12/2014 12:48

FOOD &

Lifestyle LIVING THE LIFE

I

t’s pretty cold this time of year, but it’s busy too. Food is the order of the day – delicious dishes that can make winter something to look forward to, with ingredients from Irish world-class suppliers. Meanwhile, creative souls replicate the boats used by Newgrange’s builders, or prepare an incredible showcase of design. And wildlife carries on – though the stoats and pine martens can be elusive.

Lambay Island Boyne currachs The Happy Pear Artisan foods Recipes

119 136 148 159 164

Irish stoat Year of Design Handball photography Fashion Motoring

176 178 19 196 24

EAR TO THE GROUND 117

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ISA

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING & DINNER DANCE

N

ow with the last of the 133 Shows over for 2014 & all the All Ireland Finals decided , The Irish Shows Association turns its attention to other matters, like preparing for its ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING & DINNER DANCE which is taking place in the Hillgrove Hotel Leisure & Spa Monaghan Town on Saturday the 22nd November 2014. The Association is very upbeat about the Show season just ended & say for the first year in a long time there was no Show cancelled because of the weather & many of the Championships had bigger numbers competing.

The members are hoping that all Shows will be represented in the Hillgrove Hotel Monaghan, home County of National President Jim Harrison for what is always a great weekend where people can relax & have a nice break in the lovely surroundings at the end of a long showing season on the 21st & 22nd of November.

Tickets for the function can be got from any of the five Regional Secretaries, & from the National President or from Head Office at Pinegrove, Mountbellew Ballinasloe Co Galway. telephone numbers for all can be had on our web at www.irieshshows.org

Irish Shows Association Board members pictured at the 2013 AGM in the Carrickdale Hotel Dundalk SEATED: L to R front row Christina O Malley, Catherine Cotter, Catherine Gallagher, Derek Quinton , Jim Harrison National President, Michael Hughes National Secretary, Valerie Thorington, Kitty Cotter, & Angela Jordan CENTRE: Fr Christy McCormack, David Myles, David Sheehan National Treasurer, David Devane, Dorothea Lazenby, John Connolly, Edwin Cartwright , John O Hara, Bill Leeman & Dan O Connell. AT BACK: Frank Butler, Pat Corbet National Vice President, Paddy Buggy, Joe Lillis, Paddy Joe Foy & Graham Boyd. MISSING FROM PICTURE ARE John Brown, Eleanor Fleming, Carl Gilsenan, Joe Murphy, & James Wycherley

Just to prove that distance does not matter this group of people all members of Bantry Show West Cork seen here with the National President Jim Harrison travelled to the North last November to attend the AGM & Dinner & really enjoyed the weekend & will making it to Monaghan again this November.

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MC PHILLIPS Wood Shavings Quality Animal Bedding

• Supplier of top quality, dust extraced shavings.

• Bulk Artic loads of shavings delivered nationwide.

• 100% pure white kiln dried flakes.

Tel: 047 54383, 086 8844 027 Email: smcphillips@gmail.com Drumloo South, Newbliss, Co. Monaghan

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P118_Advert Missing.indd 1

6/5/14 10:37:39

09/12/2014 15:00

N

ISA

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING & DINNER DANCE

ow with the last of the 133 Shows over for 2014 & all the All Ireland Finals decided , The Irish Shows Association turns its attention to other matters, like preparing for its ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING & DINNER DANCE which is taking place in the Hillgrove Hotel Leisure & Spa Monaghan Town on Saturday the 22nd November 2014. The Association is very upbeat about the Show season just ended & say for the first year in a long time there was no Show cancelled because of the weather & many of the Championships had bigger numbers competing.

The members are hoping that all Shows will be represented in the Hillgrove Hotel Monaghan, home County of National President Jim Harrison for what is always a great weekend where people can relax & have a nice break in the lovely surroundings at the end of a long showing season on the 21st & 22nd of November.

Tickets for the function can be got from any of the five Regional Secretaries, & from the National President or from Head Office at Pinegrove, Mountbellew Ballinasloe Co Galway. telephone numbers for all can be had on our web at www.irishshows.org

Irish Shows Association Board members pictured at the 2013 AGM in the Carrickdale Hotel Dundalk SEATED: L to R front row Christina O Malley, Catherine Cotter, Catherine Gallagher, Derek Quinton , Jim Harrison National President, Michael Hughes National Secretary, Valerie Thorington, Kitty Cotter, & Angela Jordan CENTRE: Fr Christy McCormack, David Myles, David Sheehan National Treasurer, David Devane, Dorothea Lazenby, John Connolly, Edwin Cartwright , John O Hara, Bill Leeman & Dan O Connell. AT BACK: Frank Butler, Pat Corbet National Vice President, Paddy Buggy, Joe Lillis, Paddy Joe Foy & Graham Boyd. MISSING FROM PICTURE ARE John Brown, Eleanor Fleming, Carl Gilsenan, Joe Murphy, & James Wycherley

Just to prove that distance does not matter this group of people all members of Bantry Show West Cork seen here with the National President Jim Harrison travelled to the North last November to attend the AGM & Dinner & really enjoyed the weekend & will making it to Monaghan again this November.

233286 ISA.indd 1

11/12/2014 17:43

MC PHILLIPS Wood Shavings Quality Animal Bedding

• Supplier of top quality, dust extraced shavings.

• Bulk Artic loads of shavings delivered nationwide.

• 100% pure white kiln dried flakes.

Tel: 047 54383, 086 8844 027 Email: smcphillips@gmail.com Drumloo South, Newbliss, Co. Monaghan

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P118_Advert Missing.indd 1

6/5/14 10:37:39

11/12/2014 18:40

LAMBAY ISLAND

Lambay Island, just off the coast of Dublin.

IRELAND’S MOST

Unique Farm

Louise Donnery finds out all about Lambay Island in Dublin Bay – home to a unique farm and a surprising species, visited by Ear To The Ground’s Darragh McCullough in this series of the show.

L

ambay Island is about four kilometers offshore from Dublin, and is the easternmost point of the Republic.

The waters that connect Lambay to the mainland, while covering only a small expanse, can be quite treacherous, and sailing conditions can change at a moment’s notice.

However, this does not often deter many sailors from anchoring in the island’s sheltered bays to enjoy and observe the plethora of wildlife. The island is home to a very large breeding population of seabirds and seals, as well as their own herds of deer, cattle and – most interestingly – wallabies.

The island is privately owned by the Baring family, and landing is not permitted without permission – however, the Baring family do occasionally permit tour groups to explore the island and observe its unique animal inhabitants.

There is a small and permanent community on the island, and those who do visit are served by small motor boats that make the sometimes harrowing journey between Malahide marina and Lambay harbour several times a week.

Lambay Island has gained international attention over the years for its bird sanctuary. The sanctuary was created by Cecil Baring, the first Baring to purchase Lambay, for £9,000 in 1904. It is home to an abundance of guillemots, who quite possibly lay the most beautiful eggs in the world – turquoise, with varying patterns.

Puffins have also been seen, distinctive in their brightly coloured feet and beaks. Kittiwake birds with their distinctive cries, cormorants, shags and grey lag geese are plentiful at different times of the year.

FAR FROM HOME Even a group of wallabies have come to inhabit Lambay, despite being over 10,000 miles from their native land of Australia. During the 1980s, Dublin Zoo had an uncontrollable rise in wallaby numbers. As the kangaroo-like creatures started to reach capacity in their modest enclosure, zoo officials began to look for a suitable habitat to relocate them.

The zoo took a group to Lambay Island and released them into the wild. Since then, their numbers have grown greatly and with their distinctive breeding habits

the island will no doubt have a sizeable population in the near future. The wallaby population stood at over 50 at the last count some years ago. However, if you ever manage a trip to Lambay don’t expect an easy task in spotting these creatures. Despite the fact that they are clearly a little out of place on an island off the coast of Ireland, these furry marsupials deploy some impressive camouflage EAR TO THE GROUND 119

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LAMBAY ISLAND

Lambay Island, just off the coast of Dublin.

Photo: Ireland’s Content Pool.

IRELAND’S MOST

Unique Farm

Louise Donnery finds out all about Lambay Island in Dublin Bay – home to a unique farm and a surprising species, visited by Ear To The Ground’s Darragh McCullough in this series of the show.

L

ambay Island is about four kilometers offshore from Dublin, and is the easternmost point of the Republic.

The waters that connect Lambay to the mainland, while covering only a small expanse, can be quite treacherous, and sailing conditions can change at a moment’s notice.

However, this does not often deter many sailors from anchoring in the island’s sheltered bays to enjoy and observe the plethora of wildlife. The island is home to a very large breeding population of seabirds and seals, as well as their own herds of deer, cattle and – most interestingly – wallabies.

The island is privately owned by the Baring family, and landing is not permitted without permission – however, the Baring family do occasionally permit tour groups to explore the island and observe its unique animal inhabitants.

There is a small and permanent community on the island, and those who do visit are served by small motor boats that make the sometimes harrowing journey between Malahide marina and Lambay harbour several times a week.

Lambay Island has gained international attention over the years for its bird sanctuary. The sanctuary was created by Cecil Baring, the first Baring to purchase Lambay, for £9,000 in 1904. It is home to an abundance of guillemots, who quite possibly lay the most beautiful eggs in the world – turquoise, with varying patterns.

Puffins have also been seen, distinctive in their brightly coloured feet and beaks. Kittiwake birds with their distinctive cries, cormorants, shags and grey lag geese are plentiful at different times of the year.

FAR FROM HOME Even a group of wallabies have come to inhabit Lambay, despite being over 10,000 miles from their native land of Australia. During the 1980s, Dublin Zoo had an uncontrollable rise in wallaby numbers. As the kangaroo-like creatures started to reach capacity in their modest enclosure, zoo officials began to look for a suitable habitat to relocate them.

The zoo took a group to Lambay Island and released them into the wild. Since then, their numbers have grown greatly and with their distinctive breeding habits

the island will no doubt have a sizeable population in the near future. The wallaby population stood at over 50 at the last count some years ago. However, if you ever manage a trip to Lambay don’t expect an easy task in spotting these creatures. Despite the fact that they are clearly a little out of place on an island off the coast of Ireland, these furry marsupials deploy some impressive camouflage EAR TO THE GROUND 119

ETTG_Winter 2014_Lambay.indd 119

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LAMBAY ISLAND

Kittiwakes are to be seen at Lambay’s long-established bird sanctuary.

A guillemot’s eggs have pointed tips to prevent them from rolling out of their nests.

techniques, and hide in the undergrowth quite effectively.

Along with venison, beef, poultry and rabbit, wallabies are now farmed on the island. Ear to the Ground presenter Darragh McCullough recently visited Lambay to see this unusual setup for himself, exploring the island with Matthew Jebb, a great grandson of Cecil Baring.

Darragh witnessed first hand the odd sight of the wallabies on a thoroughly rural and isolated backdrop, and followed their journey from farm to fork – a distance that spans just ten miles, from Lambay Island to L’Ecrivain restaurant in Dublin where Michelin Star chef Derry Clarke masterfully prepared him a wallaby steak.

The Market Butchers in Rathcoole Co Dublin, and sister wholesale business M&K Meats – partly owned by master butcher Michael Bermingham – have recently secured a ten-year deal to exclusively supply the meat and game from Lambay to cater for an eager public demand. Wallaby meat does not have to travel far across the choppy sea crossing before being expertly prepared and supplied to consumers. Michael says that the reaction of the Irish public to such an exotic meat has been an interesting one. “A lot of people are intrigued about

it... We have actually made burgers from wallaby meat. It is just so tender, it is like a mixture between beef and venison. I made the burgers and people thought it was tremendous!”

FARMING ON LAMBAY The island is around a mile and a half long and one mile wide, containing about 750 acres, of which 650 acres is suitable for farming. Lambay is exclusively farmed using organic methods and material. Vegetables and fruit are grown in the walled garden of the medieval castle, while cattle, sheep, deer and wallabies graze the lush, salt-sprayed grass.

The Lambay cattle herd was originally brought together by Cecil Baring in the 1950s. Small but significant additions to the herd on the island over the past few years have changed its genetic make up, but only very slightly. The herd now consists of a mix of Galloway and Aberdeen Angus beef. Michael Bermingham believes that it is the environment that the herd is reared in that gives it its distinctive texture and taste. “The environment, the habitat, it is practically uninhabited from a human perspective. The animals are left undisturbed, and animal welfare is paramount. The diet of natural herbs, heathers, grasses and salt that comes

in from the sea makes it so unique and special.”

Lambay lamb is arguably the best quality lamb available from the east coast of Ireland. Never one to break from tradition, the lamb is usually born on the mainland and then transported over to the island to spend its life roaming the hills and meadows of Lambay. The lambs’ exclusive diet of sea salt-tussled grass gives the meat a deep and rich colour and texture. “The lamb is a black-faced mountain lamb crossed with a lowland lamb... It is nearly like rosé, because of the herbs and heathers in its diet.”

Michael is well-versed in handling venison and other game, but the deer on Lambay Island provide him with a completely different-tasting meat to experiment with. The habitat at Lambay is unique and the deer thrive. “I’ve actually seen the venison eating seaweed, which brings a natural saltiness to the meat”, he says. The herd consists of two strains of deer, with the larger deer having its ancestral roots back to Irish red deer and the smaller deer consisting of more recent additions from European breeds.

There’s a lot happening on such a small island – a fascinating farming story has been developing just off the coast of the capital.

120 EAR TO THE GROUND

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11/12/2014 18:16

ADVERTISING FEATURE

The Irish Holstein Friesian Association (IHFA) is a member-owned organisation directed by a board elected from its 3,700 members in 15 club areas. The Association is approved by the Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine, and is responsible for the registration of pedigree Holstein Friesian cattle and the validity and upkeep of the herdbook of Holstein Friesian cattle through DNA checks, and for giving direction to the development and promotion of the breed in Ireland through its many events and services.

There are 15 club areas across the country. The Young Members Association (YMA) is its youth arm, serving as a social outlet for young members up to 26 years of age. There is also a Pure Friesian Club.

SERVICES April 1st 2015 is a seminal date on the calendar for the Irish dairy industry, heralding an era of freedom of milk production with the dismantling of the EU quota system. The usage of Holstein Friesian genetics is more popular than ever with dairy farmers as it is the most efficient breed to convert grazed grass to milk solids.

Among the many services offered by IHFA is a Grade-Up service where non-members can attain herd Pedigree status for well bred cows with good records. By grading up to pedigree, this added value can be re-

Adding

Value

IHFA services can increase the value of your herd.

TO YOUR DAIRY HERD

Taylor family farm, Clooboygher Holsteins, Co.Leitrim, setting for the IHFA Open Day 2014’.

alised. The IHFA also provide a classification service and linear scoring. An aid to breeding decisions, and a method of adding value through building up an animal’s ancestry, it is an independent linear assessment of the cows in your herd carried out by our professionally trained personnel. IHFA can also provide for DNA-based gene make-up analysis. IHFA have been early adopters of this breakthrough technology, and possess a sample databank.

The Genomic service allows for parentage verification and an estimation of potential genetic merit from a single tissue sample from an animal. All registered stock bulls are genomically tested as part of the process.

For further details & any queries contact IHFA, Clonakilty, Co Cork.

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EAR TO THE GROUND 06/10/2014 09:54:29 121

11/12/2014 17:45

ADVERTISING FEATURE

SOBAC

TO BASICS

We spoke with Galway farmer Sean McDermott to discover more about the impact of Sobac’s range of soil-improving products on his dairy farm.

ORIGINALLY FROM LONGFORD, Sean McDermott has farmed around 100 acres near Eyrecourt in Co. Galway for the past 11 years. A dairy farmer, Sean has 180 cattle on the farm in total, and will be milking around 100 cows next year. His wife and four kids make up the rest of the farm’s human population. “The land is fairly good up here, but when it rains, it will get sticky quite quickly – it doesn’t soak away that fast. But it isn’t that bad either,” Sean explains.

Sean took over operations here around 11 years ago, when the land was being used for tillage. Moving into sheep and sucklers, he ordered a soil sample to discover more about the quality of the land. “The Ps and Ks were non-existant on the farm,” he recalls. The Ks in particular were on the floor – the tester said he’d never seen a reading as low before. We needed to spread a tonne of lime to the acre.”

RECOVERY Farmers are often reminded about good grassland management, but good soil management is also key. Dairy farms have a high nutrient requirement and so farmers should opt for optimum nutrient content in their soil. Sean’s ground

has undergone a recovery process over the past decade. As the years passed he began to see improvements, and his recovery method decreased to the spreading of a bag of 0-7-30 fertiliser at the start of the year, and a bag at the end.

Three years ago, however, he stopped, coinciding with his first use of SOBAC’s Bacteriosol pellets. The French company first introduced this concept to Ireland during the Tullamore show in 2012 and has since completed successful trials. The basic concept behind SOBAC’s products is the creation of humus – a point of stability where organic matter won’t break down in the soil any further. As a result, micro-organism activity increases and the humus retains elements such as nutrients to improve soil structure and fertility.

Bacteriosol is a pellet spread directly on the ground, while Bacteriolit is a powder to be added to farmyard manure or slurry.

Sean first heard about these products at a farmers’ meeting in Loughrea, and decided to try it for himself. “I thought that if it did half of what the sales rep said, it would be great stuff,” he recalls with a laugh. To begin with Sean spread pellets on receded ground following a silage cut, and left the ground for two to three

weeks. The difference in the second silage cut was only seven bales. Happy with this result, he spread three tonnes of pellets on his grazing block and then later added another half tonne to his slurry supply and treated the remaining paddocks.

There’s no doubting his happiness with the results over the past three years. “We found it very good and as the years go on, we are finding more of a response to the treatment. I haven’t spread lime on the home block for three years, no Ps and Ks, none at all,” he explains. “On the grazing side of the farm, we got about 3-4 grazings from our paddocks where we would have had two beforehand. Three weeks after one grazing there was 2,500kg cover.”

Sean was among the first from his local group to take on SOBAC and reap the benefits, and he urges his fellow farmers to try the product, and to come and see the results for themselves. “There’s only one way you’ll see if it’s going to work or not – go and look at a farm that’s using it,” he says flatly. “I’ve no problem opening the gates here for any man who wants to have a look. There’s a lot people who might think I’m mad, but it’s working for me. The farm is blooming,” Sean concludes.

122 EAR TO THE GROUND

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11/9/14 12:17:21

11/12/2014 17:39

SPECIAL OLYMPICS

Moment Shine

A

TO

JOE KELLY WEARS THE MUNSTER JERSEY AT THE 2014 SPECIAL OLYMPICS IRELAND

It’s every athlete’s dream to participate in the Olympics, and for 10 year-old Joe Kelly that dream came true this year at the Special Olympics Limerick 2014. Paula Kerrigan interviewed Joe’s coach, Geraldine Ryan Meagher, and his mother, Yvonne Kelly, to hear this young athlete’s heroic story.

J

oe Kelly lives with his parents, Yvonne and Liam Kelly, and his four younger sisters on the family dairy farm in Knockavilla, Donaskeigh parish in Co Limerick – and thanks to his heroics as an Olympic athlete last summer, he’s become a local celebrity of sorts.

Joe has Agenisis of the Corpus Callosum, a rare congenital disorder, and attends Scoil Aonghusa in Cashel, Co Tipperary. The school encourages all students over the age of 8 to get involved with sports activities, and Joe undertakes weekly training sessions in his particular discipline of motor activities under the guidance of head coach Geraldine Ryan Meagher, assisted by coach Helen BreenThompson.

The school regularly visits other schools around the country and invites other schools to visit them so that they can get the message out about what their special athletes can do. “It’s great to see the enthusiasm for our athletes when we travel to other schools,” says coach Geraldine Ryan Meagher. “Our students get the opportunity to show what they can do, rather than the focus being on what they can’t do.”

The feedback from the other students is usually very positive and her kids

Joe competing in the Ramp Bowling event at the Special Olympics Ireland 2014

come away glowing from the attention and support. Scoil Aonghusa visited Donaskeigh National School, where two of Joe’s sisters are enrolled, and it gave his sisters the chance to show how proud they are of their big brother. “The girls stood

by Joe while he was doing his bowling for the whole school to see, and it was a very special moment for us all,” says his mother, Yvonne.

Being able to celebrate Joe’s achievements is as important for his family as it is for Joe himself. Yvonne talks about how her family has always been involved in Joe’s activities. “I certainly do feel that we are very lucky in that we can bring the four girls along with us. They have known nothing different... this is normal.” These days, Joe has become quite a recognisable sports figure in his local parish and

beyond. “He is flying the flag for the community,” says Yvonne.

For coach Meagher, Joe’s success story was an endorsement of how far Ireland has come in terms of special needs training and support. “When I started out 35 years ago there was much more of a “God-love-them” kind of attitude.

But today there is much more awareness from the community and there’s a real admiration for the achievements of Special Olympics athletes like Joe. They know the kids have put the work in and that they are performing to the best of their ability the same as any athlete would at a national event.”

The 2014 Special Olympics Ireland Games took place in Limerick from June 12th to 15th, and Joe proudly donned the Munster jersey to participate in his EAR TO THE GROUND 125

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SPECIAL OLYMPICS

ABOVE: Joe with Scoil Aonghusa National Games team and coaches, retired Tipperary hurler John Leahy at centre back of photo. Joe is in the centre frontline of the photo.

BELOW: Joe with his mom and dad, Yvonne and Liam, and his sisters Millie, Ruby, Elise and Belle.

“People with special needs have to get their moment to shine too.The sense of achievement is something we can’t quantify, but we can see it.”

category of motor activities. Although there are other sporting events every year, the Special Olympics only comes around every four years so the pride of being able to compete for his province was palpable. To mark the event, Scoil Aonghusa brought its contingent down to Limerick city for the full four days so that the students could take full advantage of the games. “They were able to support other athletes and head over the Healthy Athletes Village for massages and other pampering. It was a real event,” says Geraldine.

Joe participated in two events in the motor activities category: ball push and ramp bowling. The family came up with the chant “Go Joe Kelly Go!” and each of his sisters wore a t-shirt with one of the words on it to show their support. Joe’s mother says she was on the edge of her seat when her son’s turn came. “I felt just completely nervous, it was just one of those big moments. When any child is going to do a race or anything you just feel nervous for them that it’ll all go off well for them.” But for the man of the hour there were no nerves, she says. When the moment of truth came, Joe didn’t falter and did his team and family proud. “I couldn’t have been prouder of him,” says Geraldine. “He performed brilliantly and it was a very special moment for all of us.”

As Joe’s dad Liam put it, “people with special needs have to get their moment

to shine too.” Meagher concurs and says that “at the start of the year when we start training they’re a little slouched in the chair and maybe self-esteem isn’t as high, but by the end of the year they’ve become little heroes. They just sit up straighter, the head is up, the chin is up, and they are so proud. The sense of achievement is something we can’t quantify, but we can see it.” All agree that Joe clearly enjoyed the applause and encouragement he received for his performance at the Special Olympics in June and made the long and sometimes difficult road worthwhile.

As for the future, Joe will continue with his training at Scoil Aonghusa and keep fine-tuning his skills. “He’s so involved in sports with the school. We go in to the hydrotherapy pool in Limerick once a week as well and he does swimming at school too. He’s also involved in the regional Olympics, and the next Olympics that comes up he’ll be going again,” says his mother. Coach Meagher explains that there’s always room for improvement for athletes, whether it’s greater independence or improved coordination. Whatever his future holds, it seems we haven’t heard the last of this rising star.

For further information about getting involved in Special Olympics events and activities head to www.specialolympics.ie or follow @SOIreland on Twitter.

126 EAR TO THE GROUND

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10/12/2014 12:03

80% 5% IN AFRICA WOMEN DO

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11/12/2014 10:41

11/12/2014 15:33

ADVERTISING FEATURE

Supporting Farmers WITH

ZURICH

We spoke with Michael Doyle, Head of Agri Business with Zurich, who discusses a positive year for the business in Ireland and explains what farmers can do to reduce risk on their land.

Z

urich is one of Ireland’s leading insurance companies, with a range of products and services from motor to SME and professional indemnity insurance. In recognition of the importance of the farming sector in Ireland, Zurich launched its competitive farm insurance offering in October 2012.

It’s been a positive two years – in the last 12 months the insurer has seen its agri business grow exponentially and has enhanced its reputation with key brokers and customers. Michael Doyle says “Zurich is now a serious player in this market, not just recognised by brokers and customers, but by our competitors as well”. “We have forged a very strong relationship with, in particular, the ICMSA and the ICSA, and this is standing to us.”

As part of its expansion into the farming market, Zurich has become involved in several sponsorship events, in particular the Farmer of the Year Awards and in more recent times the Irish Belgian Blue Cattle Society.

“The Farmer of the Year competition is very unique because it is the only competition of its kind which showcases and recognises excellence across all of the various farming categories,” Doyle explains. “There are categories that received little recognition up until now, like Beef Farmer of the Year and Tillage Farmer of the Year. We saw that as a huge

Michael Martin from Moate, Co Westmeath is given the keys to his new tractor worth e64,292 at the National Ploughing Championships thanks to Zurich and the Irish Independent.

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ADVERTISING FEATURE Darragh McCullough of the Farming Independent; Conor Brennan, CEO of Zurich General Insurance Ireland; Minister for Agriculture, Food & the Marine, Mr Simon Coveney T.D. and Michael Doyle, Zurich’s Head of Agri Business pictured at the launch of the Farmer of the Year Awards 2014.

“Over the past four years, we have seen snow, rain and stormy weather batter farms right across the country. While all of us hope this will not be the norm going forward, being prepared to deal with these conditions is absolutely vital. opportunity and we are delighted to be associated with it in partnership with the Irish Independent. We had a great evening recognising all of the winners at the awards last May and we’re looking forward to an even bigger and better event in 2015.”

Zurich has also maintained a presence at the seminal event of Irish agriculture – the National Ploughing Championships.

“We had a number of partnerships at the Ploughing Championships, from the ICMSA with Campion Insurance and the ICSA with Sparrow Insurance” says Doyle.

We also gave away a tractor worth over e64,000 in partnership with the Irish Independent which was fantastic. The winner was a young beef farmer from

Moate – Michael Martin, who was just 21 years of age. We’re delighted to be helping a young farmer make a positive start to their farming career.”

TRENDS IN THE MARKET When asked about the prospects for farming in Ireland as we move towards 2015, Doyle remains cautiously optimistic, noting both positive and negative trends over the past year. “If I was to summarise 2014, I suppose I’d have to say there were great growing conditions for agriculture with an estimate of the second highest level of global cereal production ever recorded.

Beef prices dropped following the increase in Irish cattle slaughtering and

record global harvests led to a sharp fall in cereal prices. On the up side, there was a reduction in feed and fuel costs.

In terms of outlook, there is a possibility there will be a shortage of cattle in 2015, which will hopefully lead to an increase in prices. The dairy industry is still the most difficult one to call and remains uncertain. Prices have dropped and the expectation is that they might drop further as a result of the abolition of milk quotas. It remains to be seen how this will affect those making a living from dairy farming. Doyle also has some advice to offer on the topic of reducing farm risk – something which will not only assist in ensuring safer farming practices, but will demonstrate to an insurer that you are prepared to deal with unexpected events should they arise, such as the extreme weather we have witnessed in recent years “Over the past four years, we have seen snow, rain and stormy weather batter farms right across the country. While all of us hope this will not be the norm going forward, being prepared to deal with these conditions is absolutely vital.

Farmers will always be at the mercy of the weather, and without the implementation of an effective contingency plan the industry can be left quite vulnerable.”

130 EAR TO THE GROUND

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

Darragh McCullough of the Farming Independent; Conor Brennan, CEO of Zurich General Insurance Ireland; Minister for Agriculture, Food & the Marine, Mr Simon Coveney T.D. and Michael Doyle, Zurich’s Head of Agri Business pictured at the launch of the Farmer of the Year Awards 2014.

“Over the past four years, we have seen snow, rain and stormy weather batter farms right across the country. While all of us hope this will not be the norm going forward, being prepared to deal with these conditions is absolutely vital. opportunity and we are delighted to be associated with it in partnership with the Irish Independent. We had a great evening recognising all of the winners at the awards last May and we’re looking forward to an even bigger and better event in 2015.”

Zurich has also maintained a presence at the seminal event of Irish agriculture – the National Ploughing Championships.

“We had a number of partnerships at the Ploughing Championships, from the ICMSA with Campion Insurance and the ICSA with Sparrow Insurance” says Doyle.

We also gave away a tractor worth over e64,000 in partnership with the Irish Independent which was fantastic. The winner was a young beef farmer from

Moate – Michael Martin, who was just 21 years of age. We’re delighted to be helping a young farmer make a positive start to their farming career.”

TRENDS IN THE MARKET When asked about the prospects for farming in Ireland as we move towards 2015, Doyle remains cautiously optimistic, noting both positive and negative trends over the past year. “If I was to summarise 2014, I suppose I’d have to say there were great growing conditions for agriculture with an estimate of the second highest level of global cereal production ever recorded.

Beef prices dropped following the increase in Irish cattle slaughtering and

record global harvests led to a sharp fall in cereal prices. On the up side, there was a reduction in feed and fuel costs.

In terms of outlook, there is a possibility there will be a shortage of cattle in 2015, which will hopefully lead to an increase in prices. The dairy industry is still the most difficult one to call and remains uncertain. Prices have dropped and the expectation is that they might drop further as a result of the abolition of milk quotas. It remains to be seen how this will affect those making a living from dairy farming. Doyle also has some advice to offer on the topic of reducing farm risk – something which will not only assist in ensuring safer farming practices, but will demonstrate to an insurer that you are prepared to deal with unexpected events should they arise, such as the extreme weather we have witnessed in recent years “Over the past four years, we have seen snow, rain and stormy weather batter farms right across the country. While all of us hope this will not be the norm going forward, being prepared to deal with these conditions is absolutely vital.

Farmers will always be at the mercy of the weather, and without the implementation of an effective contingency plan the industry can be left quite vulnerable.”

130 EAR TO THE GROUND

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11/12/2014 16:50

ADVERTISING FEATURE

Doyle advises farmers to ensure their buildings are in good condition before wintertime and to monitor how they are coping throughout the year. It’s also a good idea to conduct an inspection of your land. “Inspect trees and boundary fences which may be vulnerable to storm damage, particularly those adjacent to access roads and public roads,” Doyle advises. “Carry out necessary cutting and pruning, and any dead or rotting trees should be felled. Owners of multi-site farm buildings should carry out regular inspections of all buildings whether they’re occupied or not. By taking preventative action a farmer will demonstrate to their insurer that they have a willingness to reduce their risk exposure and are doing the utmost to protect their premises. It’s critical now that farmers take these steps.”

For now, Doyle recognises the two major forces which have helped Zurich move from strength-to-strength. “The support from our brokers and customers has been truly phenomenal, without their support and that of the farming community in general we wouldn’t be where we are today. It’s shown that there is a lot of appetite out there for an alternative insurer. We’ve achieved a lot in a very short time, and with the support of the farming community we will continue growing our share of the market by providing competitive rates and a very comprehensive product.”

ABOVE: John Enright, General Secretary of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA); Michael Doyle from Zurich; Vice President of the ICMSA Pat McCormack and Robert Tyrrell of Campion Insurance pictured at the 2014 Ploughing Championships.

ABOVE: Michael Doyle pictured with Eilish Sparrow of Sparrow Insurances and the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) General Secretary, Eddie Punch and President, Patrick Kent.

BELOW: Pedigree bull ‘Bluestar High Flyer’, bred by John Redmond from Fenagh, Co Carlow, is named Overall Champion at the 2014 Pedigree Belgian Blue Championships, sponsored by Zurich. Pictured with John are Zurich’s Michael Doyle and Benoit Lucyx, President of the Beef Traders, Belgium.

Zurich Insurance plc is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.

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10/12/2014 15:52

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Glanbia is poised to tap into the lucrative market of gluten-free products following the opening of a new state-of-the-art oat processing facility in Portlaoise. demand for growing premium oats for the food sector will expand further with the opening of the mill. The minister added that the opening marks an “exciting new chapter” in Ireland’s agri-food story.

“The gluten-free market, which is expanding rapidly, is worth £180 million in the UK alone. This growing market and the opening of this new mill in Portlaoise represent an exciting opportunity for grain farmers in Leinster.”

Colm Eustace, CEO of Glanbia Agribusiness said: “This development would not be possible without the cooperation of our growers. With our specialist agronomists and research and development team, we look forward to continuing to work closely with our growers to achieve the quality and innovation required to meet discerning consumer needs.”

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lanbia is a well-known company in the dairy sector, and has specialised in nextgeneration grains since 2007. Its evolution has happened over a long period of time, as the company patiently took on new projects and products.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Charlie Flanagan, was present to launch the new Glanbia Agribusiness Oats Mill, which is the first facility of its kind to be built in Ireland in recent years.

Glanbia’s agronomists work closely with a team of 20 co-operative farmers to create carefully controlled processes at the seed selection stage, and use dedicated glutenfree equipment throughout production.

The mill will produce gluten-free products with significant potential to increase exports to the US and European food markets. The facility, which operates to the highest international food safety

standards (grade A BRC accreditation), was developed following the creation of Glanbia’s exclusive partnership with Sturm Foods, a US-based businesses known for the McCann’s Irish Oatmeal brand.

Speaking at the official opening, Minister Flanagan said that he hopes that

PRODUCTS Cereal bars, bread and babyfood made from the country’s first home-grown gluten-free oats will soon be available on our supermarket shelves. OatPure glutenfree oats are ideal for bread, cookies, granola bars and on-the-go nutrition.

By offering beneficial properties such as fibre, protein and ALA omega-3s, OatPure gluten-free oats can enhance the texture and health profile of these products.

The products will contain less than 10 ppm of gluten, substantially lower than the current products on the market, which advertise their gluten free products at 20 ppm of gluten. ●

Keogh’s Crisps Another product making life easier for coeliacs is Keogh’s crisps, which claim to be the only Irish-produced glutenfree crisps on the market. Flavours such as gluten-free Atlantic sea salt and Irish cider vinegar crisps, and shamrock and sour cream crisps, have been available for a while. They were recently joined by gluten-free Dubliner Irish cheese and onion, using Irish potatoes and rice flour, and their gluten-free range is now up to seven flavours including the seasonal roast turkey and secret stuffing.

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PROTECT YOUR HERD WITH ANNUAL

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IBR vaccinations are an effective method in controlling IBR on your farm.

EAMONN MCLOUGHNEY, of Ballythomas Holsteins, farms near Ardcroney, Nenagh, Co Tipperary. With a spring-calving herd of 80 high-yielding dairy cows, Eamonn is well-known among Holstein Friesian breeders as a producer of excellent quality replacement stock and as a winner in the spring-calving section of the national herds competition for several years. For the past few years, Eamonn has bred 60 or so replacement heifers, keeping 20 for the home herd and selling the remainder as either in-calf heifers or freshly-calved heifers.

BALLYTHOMAS IBR VACCINATION PROGRAMME When Eamonn initially started an IBR vaccination programme seven years ago, he used Rispoval IBR Inactivated (every six months) based on veterinary advice at the time. There were no obvious problems with IBR in the herd but Eamonn wanted to make sure that his herd was well protected against IBR and that he could produce IBR-free animals for the export market, so all breeding animals received inactivated IBR vaccine. Over two years ago, his vet advised him to give a dose of Rispoval IBR Live for the six-month booster, so he could then switch to the 12-month Rispoval IBR programme. ‘‘So far so good,’’ says Eamonn, with regard to the switch to the annual IBR vaccination programme. ‘‘I vaccinate the cows in December with the dead IBR vaccine, as this is the most convenient time for me to get annual vaccinations completed. I always used Rispoval IBR Inactivated anyway, so it’s now more convenient to do it once a year, as there is the cost and laboursaving aspect of one less vaccine during the grazing season.’’

SUCCESS Eamonn knows his IBR programme is successful as he has sold Ballythomas replacement heifers to Britain and beyond as “Guaranteed IBR free” for years. A blood test can establish whether animals have been vaccinated with an IBR vaccine or if they are carriers of the disease.

Given Eamonn’s success with the Rispoval IBR programme, he is confident that the produce he is selling are protected by the 12-month protocol which he is now using.

The sale of high quality, high health status replacement stock, apart from being an integral part of farm income, is a source of pride for Eamonn.

IN-CALF HEIFERS ‘‘I started the in-calf heifers on the programme this year using Rispoval IBR live this summer and they will get a booster with the adult cows of Rispoval IBR Inactivated at Christmas. Next year, I plan to start vaccinating the heifers at a younger age, so all replacement heifers over three months of age will get Rispoval IBR Live in July (six months before the routine annual herd booster).’’

IBR VACCINE EFFECTIVENESS IBR vaccines are considered very effective in controlling IBR. The decision on whether to use live or dead (inactivated) IBR Eamonn McLoughney vaccines should be based on instanding in front of his dividual herd veterinary advice. in-calf heifers with his young helpers, Cathal and The main point to remember is Anna. that vaccines should always be used according to the individual manufacturer’s instructions. ● All live IBR vaccines in Ireland only have six months duration of protecProper Use tion and so should be given every six months. ● Only Rispoval IBR Inactivated can be ● Store vaccine on farm in a properly used on an annual basis. This only functioning fridge (+2°to +8°C). applies when used with live vaccine ● Transport vaccines between fridges in protocol. cooler bags. ● When starting a 12-month annual IBR ● Use live vaccines as soon as possible after vaccination programme, it is essential mixing the pellet with the liquid vial. that heifers (or cows) receive an initial ● Avoid leaving vaccine in strong sunlight dose of Rispoval IBR Live by intramusfor any length of time. cular injection, at least three weeks and ● Use vaccines at recommended doses not more than six months before being and route – some are intra-muscular, injected under the skin with Rispoval others are subcutaneous.

IBR Inactivated. After this, the animals ● Use vaccines at recommended intervals. receive an annual booster with Rispoval ● Check expiry date.

IBR Inactivated. ● Make sure vaccinators are working ● If you do not have a closed herd and correctly before you start (calibrate are purchasing animals of unknown equipment). health status, it is advisable to stick with ● Record animal’s identification, date of a live IBR vaccine programme every six administration and vaccine used. months.

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NEWGRANGE CURRACH PROJECT

Weaving Life

INTO AN ANCIENT CR AFT

Claidhbh Ó Gibne and Sinéad Uí Ghibne have devoted themselves to preserving and reviving the traditional craft of currach making. Their journey has led them to the Newgrange Currach Project, a unique endeavour to better understand the voyage undertaken by the Neolithic passage tomb builders. Valerie Jordan finds out about this fascinating project.

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NEWGRANGE CURRACH PROJECT

T

he history of currachstyle boats dates back to prehistoric times. The currach, or skin boat, is one of the oldest styles of vessel on record, with evidence of related boats found in ancient societies all over the world. The Boyne currach was an important part of life in the area until the 1960s. The boats were used for salmon fishing until a law banning the use of nets made them redundant. After that, there was little or no use for Boyne currachs, and the tradition died with the fishermen and currach builders who had made a living from them.

Claidhbh Ó Gibne grew up on the banks of the River Boyne, and his playground was between the River Nanny, the River Boyne and the hills and valleys in between. Part of his play involved making rafts to see if they’d float. An artist, he always worked with this hands and later developed an interest in basket weaving. While working with Joe Hogan, the famous basket maker at Loch na Fooey, he decided he wanted to build a Boyne currach. Together they researched the weave and techniques required to recreate the particular style of Boyne basket.

“Most Irish baskets are woven upside down on the ground but this particular style was unique to the Boyne currach: the rods were placed in the ground in the shape of the boat and you stood inside and wove from inside out, rather than the outside in, which is more traditional,” explains Claidhbh’s wife Sinéad. “From there, Claidhbh went to source leather and he learnt how to preserve the leather with saltpeter, which we were able to get from pharmacists in those days. He learnt about putting the skins into pits of lime to take the hair off and made his first currach, which he named Bran. In 1997 he travelled the length of the Boyne in it, from source to sea.”

It seems Claidhbh had found his calling: “His next project was a Donegal currach.

He noticed that there isn’t a restricted size; the Donegal currach is made in the same fashion – just elongated a little bit. From there he went on to a more

PHOTOS: Building and sailing a traditional Boyne currach.

Claidhbh and Sinéad have devoted many years to researching and and using this unique style of shipbuilding. Their boats go from being basic rods of wood laid out on the ground to impressive sea-going vessels believed to have been used in the transportation of building materials for Newgrange, millennia ago.

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NEWGRANGE CURRACH PROJECT

sturdy sea-going currach called Boann, the ancient name for the goddess of the River Boyne. That was a 24-foot currach and took ten cow skins. It’s gone on many journeys.”

REVIVING TRADITIONS Preserving, and indeed revitalising, ancient craft and tradition is very important to both Claidhbh and Sinéad.

They run currach-building workshops throughout the winter, conforming to traditional methods and practices of the boat builders of the past. Their current project is a Stone Age Boyne currach, built as those people would have built theirs. “We started off flint knapping to make blades to cut the bone to make bone needles. We cut antlers to be used for tools to make the currach. We had a fresh raw hide delivered last Tuesday, so at last weekend’s workshop we were fleshing that with the flint scrapers that we had made.

People are learning as we go along and it’s something we want to delve more into ourselves, so we can pass on this tradition.

“Some traditions that have died away probably won’t be revived unless somebody comes along and tries to do it, but because of the work that we have done with the revival of the currach it has grown and evolved. People are taking the craft back with them and spreading it again.”

In their crafting of currachs, Claidhbh

and Sinéad became fascinated by the people whose lives depended on them.

Their home and studio at Donore, Co Meath overlooks the ancient burial site of Newgrange, which is the inspiration for their current project and historical experiment.

“Where we live, there are questions floating about all the time about who these people were that came here, where they came from, why they came here, how they came here, and how did they build this tomb. Where did they get the stone from? None of the stone is local.

“Claidhbh was having these ideas that if people were to cross the big seas and carry three and four tonnes of stone they needed a worthy craft to be able to float with that weight. That’s where the idea of the bigger currach came from. He began to research the history of different leather boats, in particular leather boats, crossing the Irish seas, the migratory pattern of these hunter-gatherers and the patterns of the passage tomb builders.”

Claidhbh’s Newgrange currach, Bovinda – an ancient name for the River Boyne – is a 36-foot boat covered with about 70 cow hides, a triumph of both engineering and traditional craft.

In 2015 Claidhbh plans to sail it on a journey mirroring that believed to have been taken by the passage tomb-builders thousands of years ago.

FYI If you want to find out more about this unique project, Claidhbh has written a book about his work. The Boyne Currach: From Beneath the Shadows of Newgrange is published by the Four Courts Press, and is available to buy either directly at boynecurrach@gmail.com, from the publishers, or any good book store. To attend one of the workshops or to find out more about the the Boyne Currach Centre visit www. boynecurrach.com

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Celebrating 15 years in business, Ned Murphy Tractors Ltd in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford has recently expanded its reach, with the launch of its Massey Salvage division. Following the awarding of a permit, the company – a family enterprise and Massey Ferguson based business – can now purchase end-of-life tractors, salvage and process them for parts to re-sell. The Murphys break all types of MF tractors, including 8160, 3080, 3090, 6180, 6255, 6290 and many more.

Run by Ned’s two sons Keith and Gary, they supply customers with virtually any MF part they require. The majority of the firm’s business is done online, with customers seeking parts from Ireland and further afield. “Instead of customers calling in, we email them a picture of the part

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by courier,” explains Keith. Used parts offer an inexpensive alternative, typically around 50% less, while the re-use of parts is more environmentally friendly.

Since its recent start, the business has continued to grow, and Keith remains pleasantly surprised about its success. “We were very anxious about how it would go at the start, but it has surpassed our wildest expectations. We welcome any calls from dealers or farmers wishing to sell end-of-life Massey Ferguson tractors and, of course, any enquiries about parts.”

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WILDLIFE

Pine Martens

TO THE RESCUE

Ireland’s indigenous red squirrel population is making a comeback – and it seems that the pine marten’s influence is behind it.

Paula Kerrigan speaks to pine marten expert Dr Emma Sheehy about her research into this secretive animal. Photos: Maurice Flynn

R

ecent research into the Irish pine marten population has revealed some astonishing insights on this elusive animal.

Although pine martens are indigenous to Ireland, they are rarely seen – but thanks to the findings of a recent study, we know that even though we may not see them all that often, the pine marten is behind some significant ecological changes on our island.

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WILDLIFE

“In 1976 Irish law made it illegal to harm, kill, or hunt pine martens. As well as this, improvements in Irish forestry practices have increased coverage from 2 per cent to 12 per cent over the last few decades.”

pine marten actually is. The pine marten belongs to the mustelid family, which also includes the badger, mink, wolverine, weasel, and otter. We’re talking specifically about the European pine marten, which is native to Ireland and has been living on our fair isle for over a millennium. These secretive animals are usually about the size of a domestic cat (around 21 inches in length) and typically weigh about 1.5kg. Their fur can range in color from light to dark brown, but pine martens can be easily identified by the “bib” of lightercoloured fur marking their throats.

Pine martens are arboreal creatures,

using their retractable claws to scramble up trees and generally preferring life in the branches. Their diet ranges from berries and nuts to birds’ eggs and small animals.

Unfortunately, these two characteristics have been detrimental to the pine marten population in Ireland. On the one hand, deforestation has pushed pine martens out of their natural habitat – and on the other hand, scavenging small animals from homes and farms has led to human persecution.

The combination of these threats caused a serious decline in pine marten numbers and since the animal is slow-

breeding, the problem was compounded.

It was not until the mid-1970s that Irish law finally stepped in to protect these furry creatures, according to Dr Emma Sheehy. “In 1976, Irish law made it illegal to harm, kill, or hunt pine martens. As well as this, improvements in Irish forestry practices have increased coverage from 2 per cent to 12 per cent over the last few decades.” Sheehy, based at the University of Aberdeen and Waterford Institute of Technology, is perhaps the foremost expert on pine martens in Ireland.

In 2007 a national squirrel survey revealed that the invasive grey squirrel

142 EAR TO THE GROUND

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WILDLIFE

Get Involved: For those wishing to get involved in the conservation of

pine martens Dr Sheehy recommends reporting pine marten sightings to the National Biodiversity Data Centre of Ireland (records.biodiversityireland.ie). If you have a woodland area that might be a suitable habitat for a pine marten, consider building a den box to provide a home for one of these creatures. Details on how to build a den can be found at www.mammals-in-ireland.ie.

population was on the decline in the midlands of Ireland, and anecdotal evidence suggested that the revival of the pine marten population could be behind this turnabout. So in 2009, the Irish Research Council funded a study into the current condition of the pine marten population in the midland counties of Laois and Offaly, as well as Wicklow. The study was carried out as a joint initiative between NUI Galway and Waterford Institute of Technology, and led by Dr Emma Sheehy and Dr Colin Lawton.

GREY SQUIRREL INVASION There are two species of squirrels currently calling Ireland home. The red squirrel is indigenous to our country, while the grey squirrel arrived relatively recently at the start of the 20th century.

The story goes that these North American interlopers were sent over by the Duke of Buckingham as a wedding gift for one of the daughters of the Earl of Granard in Castle Forbes, Co Longford. Like Pandora, the girl naively opened the hamper on the castle lawn and the dozen or so grey squirrels bounded off for the woods, where they went on to breed with

abandon.

Until the grey squirrel crashed the party, the red squirrel lived in harmony with the pine marten in its surrounding environment. But their population was severely hit when the grey squirrels arrived and brought the parapox virus along for the ride. Without any previous exposure to this disease, the red squirrel species lacked an immunity and the disease spread like a plague. With their closest competition weakened, the grey squirrels began to flourish on our shores.

Grey squirrels are bigger and stronger than red squirrels. More importantly, grey squirrels can digest unripe fruit and nuts, while red squirrels cannot. This means that grey squirrels can munch their way through the shared food resources before the red squirrel can even attempt to join the feast. With the scales weighted against them, the red squirrel population went into decline and was on the verge of extinction in the mid-20th century.

ENTER THE PINE MARTEN This cycle was broken by the resurgence of the pine marten population. The NUI Galway/Waterford IT study found

a conclusive link between the recovery of pine martens in the midlands and the decline of grey squirrels in that area.

According to Dr Sheehy, this was a rather startling revelation because grey squirrels hadn’t previously been known to decline once they had established themselves in an area.

Laois and Offaly, as well as surrounding counties, have seen a steep drop in their invasive grey squirrel population. Thanks to a parallel evolution, red squirrels know how to stay off the pine marten’s dinner menu. While grey squirrels are huddling together in large groups on the woodland floor, red squirrels are nipping around the upper branches to avoid becoming sitting ducks. Subsequently, the study discovered that grey squirrels feature much more abundantly in pine marten scats than red squirrels.

The study also discovered that it’s not just being eaten that is causing the numbers to drop; the little critters are discouraged by the mere presence of an increasingly-abundant predator, as Dr Sheehy elaborates. “The presence of a predator population can have a number of behavioural or physiological effects on prey species, and this is a subject that has been widely studied by mammalogists worldwide. The many effects that have been found to occur include stressinduced reduction in breeding activity, suppressed immunity, changes in foraging behaviour and shifts of habitat to avoid the risk of predation.”

“The pine marten has had a positive effect in helping the red squirrel to recover in Ireland without human management,” confirms Dr Sheehy. And so the reclusive pine marten becomes the unlikely hero in the red squirrel’s comeback story in Ireland. The study concludes that as long as red squirrels continue to thrive in territories where grey squirrels have been driven out, there is every cause to be optimistic about their recovery. ●

Bio Dr Emma Sheehy is now based in the University of Aberdeen and Waterford Institute of Technology and continues to research the relationship between pine martens and squirrels. She is currently investigating both Scottish and Irish squirrel and pine marten dynamics, as funded by the Irish Research Council and Marie Curie Actions (together as an Elevate fellowship), with additional support from Forestry Commission Scotland.

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

A NATIONWIDE STUDY called ‘She’s Got Guts’ revealed that one in four Irish women refrain from social situations and recreational activities due to digestive problems. Of the 480 Irish women surveyed, three-quarters admitted that their condition affected their self-confidence and that they were too embarrassed to talk about their digestive problems or seek help.

According to Dr Eileen Murphy (PhD Nutrition), Research Director at Corkbased company Alimentary Health, IBS affects around 15 per cent of the general population and is almost twice as common in women as men, generally affecting the 18-35 age groups.

63-year-old Joan Horgan, a participant from Douglas in Co. Cork, suffered the pain and discomfort of Irritable Bowel Syndrome for over 20 years, unaware of what caused it and how to relieve its symptoms. “I have no idea what started it, but it began with bloating in my stomach.

After a few months, it progressed to difficult bowel movements with diarrhoea and constipation, but there had been no change in my diet,” says Joan.

Joan’s life soon revolved around her bowel habits, which often forced her to wear loose-fitting clothes as her stomach would significantly bloat throughout the day. After amending her diet and excluding irritable foods showed no improvement, Joan decided to seek medical help.

Professor Fergus Shanahan, Director of the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, University College Cork and Consultant Gastroenterologist, Cork University Hospital said: “The main problem with keeping digestive problems a secret is that the stress and anxiety involved in hiding the problem may end up making symptoms worse, as we know that stress and anxiety can be linked to digestive problems. We also know that positive social support has long been associated with better treatment outcomes.”

The condition kept Joan out of social situations and warranted eight colonoscopies and gastroscopies over a 14-year period as several consultants attributed her discomfort to IBS with no effective treatment available. However, she now visits her pharmacy to pick up the new PrecisionBiotic™ Alflorex® developed by Alimentary Health. Alimentary Health are a Cork based healthcare company, pioneering innovative new discoveries in the development of pharmabiotic treatments.

According to Joan, “for just over €d1 a day, I have renewed confidence and comfort in myself, which has enabled me to take control of my life again!”

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The study which aims to shed light on the scale and impact of digestive problems amongst Irish women, found a disturbing snapshot: ● 75 PER CENT of women avoid seeking help for digestive troubles due to embarrassment. ● 33 PER CENT of women suffer from on-going abdominal pain and/or spasms. ● YOUNGER COHORT AGED 18-34 suffers most from digestive problems (46 per cent). ● THREE-QUARTERS of women say that digestive problems affect their self-confidence. ● 23 PER CENT of women have missed out on a big event as a result of digestive problems. ● Contrary to the perceived notion that older women suffer most from digestive complaints, researchers found that younger women are more likely to suffer with 46 PER CENT of 18-34 year olds admitting that they experience digestive problems compared with 21 per cent of the 50+ age category of women. Constipation and diarrhoea were experienced by 27 per cent of young women, contrasting with 14 per cent of women over 50 who suffer from these complaints. Just 13 per cent of women over 50 reported abdominal pain or spasms compared with 40 per cent of 18-34 year olds.

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FOOD

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Healthy Revolution FOOD

Twins Stephen and David Flynn are on a mission to promote health and happiness through eating well. With shops, cafés, farms and education programmes there’s no shortage of enthusiasm and dedication. Stephen Flynn talks to Aoife Loy.

W

ith the traditional Irish dinnerplate consisting of meat, potatoes and two vegetables – and more emphasis on the meat – Ireland is not exactly renowned as a haven for vegetarians and vegans.

Perhaps that will change. Ten years ago The Happy Pear was set up by identical twins Stephen and David Flynn. They’re on a mission to start what they call a healthy food revolution. This involves inspiring people to eat more wholefoods, fruits and vegetables and less meat and processed foods, by making wholefood dishes that are both healthy and satisfying. Despite the popularity of meat and convenience foods, they have seen their

business go from strength to strength. They now employ about 60 people, helping to run their organic fruit and vegetable shop, two wholefood cafés, two farms, an online shop and two health education courses.

Stephen explains how they got started. “We both studied business degrees and at the time, our definition of success was being millionaires before we were 30. We always knew we wanted to do our own thing together, but felt there had to be more to life than getting a ‘real’ job so, like a lot of our generation, we went off travelling in search of truth and meaning. Dave went to South Africa with the idea of being a golf pro (but subsequently found out he hated golf), I went to Canada to do tree planting. We ended up, weirdly, becoming veggie

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FOOD

“We came back after a couple of years of our truth-seeking adventures with a new definition of success – we wanted to do something around health, community and fresh food.”

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FOOD

“When we first started out, healthy eating and organic and local eating was very left of centre – it was a fringe movement. But over the last few years, it has nearly become cool to eat healthy and to be interested in how your food was produced – it’s like the tides have changed,” Stephen says, but there are challenges involved when it comes to sourcing local produce.

“We stock as much local produce as is available and that we can get our hands on – buying from anyone local that has any vegetables or fruit to sell or barter, such as too much courgettes, cucumbers, tomatoes or whatever it may be. We buy from as many local farms as we can find and do business with. Unfortunately, because vegetable and fruit farming in Ireland is so unsubsidised and unsupported, very few people get involved in it so we produce very little of our own fruit and vegetables on this island. As a result, we have to import most of it.” In light of this, he thinks it’s important to support locally grown food. “It supports our own communities and connects us to the land and the people who have grown our food,” he says. “It also has lower food miles and is better for us and the planet.”

LEFT: Darragh Flynn, who runs the farming side of things BELOW: The Flynns promote a wholefood plant-based diet that’s high-fibre, low-calorie, low-fat and high in vitamins

“He is the type of guy who a bird would land on his shoulder or a squirrel would climb up his leg to sit on his shoulder.” at the same time and spent a couple of years getting very into health and food.

“We came back after a couple of years of our truth-seeking adventures with a new definition of success – we wanted to do something around health, community and fresh food.” With this vision in mind, Stephen walked in and offered to buy out the local fruit and vegetable shop their mother used to shop in when they were

children growing up in Greystones, Co Wicklow. This became what is now The Happy Pear.

LOCALLY GROWN PRODUCE In the ten years they have been running The Happy Pear, the twins have noticed that more and more people are concerned about the traceability of their food and are more interested in healthy eating.

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Jerry Kennedy’s Dingle Butcher One of Ireland’s Top-10 Artisan Butchers tucked into a quiet corner of Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way. Multi-Award winning lamb, beef, sausages and dry-cured bacon from the Dingle Peninsula.

From farm-to-fork with locally produced specialties and our own sauces & spice blends to accompany your selections.

mb insula la n e p le g Din lty ry specia r e K y r a A legend Gold hÉireann a n s la B 2014

Just in time for Christmas we’re offering our cooked hams, spiced beef, Blas na hEirann-winning venison sausages and other holiday favorites See why John & Sally McKenna’s Guides call us “pre-eminent Irish butchers, a master of the craft” and Georgina Campbell’s Ireland says, “Well worth seeking out. Top 10 in Ireland”

www.dinglebutcher.com | info@dinglebutcher.com Orchard Lane, Dingle, County Kerry | Tel: 066 915 2511

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MORE THAN JUST A BREAKFAST

17/11/2014 13:03

Clonakilty Whitepudding Frittata

CLONAKILTY BLACK & WHITE PUDDINGS ARE USED MAINLY AS BREAKFAST PRODUCTS BUT THEY ARE ALSO VERY VERSATILE INGREDIENTS IN COOKING. VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR CLONAKILTY RECIPES www.clonakiltyblackpudding.ie

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Morning Fresh Farm Limited was founded in 1994 and today we are proud to have three generations of the McCann Family working in the business today. We have continually invested in our farm, investing in the latest harvesting and packaging equipment.

We are a leading produce supplier located in North County Dublin, supplying the Irish and International market with the freshest pak choi, little gem lettuce, cos lettuce & butterhead lettuce all grown in our protected crop in glass houses.

Morning Fresh Farm Limited, Haytown, Rush, Co Dublin T: +353 (0)1 895 4401 E: info@morningfreshfarm.ie

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Kearns Fruit Farm was established over forty years ago on the family farm at the foothills of Mount Leinster. Originally, we began growing fruit for jam production and the farm has now developed into a large family run business producing and growing for supermarkets and the fresh fruit market.

C- 6% M-14% Y- 35% K- 7%

C- 85% We are Bord Bia approved and members of Good Food M-17% Y- 76% Ireland and members K-of57%Guaranteed Irish. With all our experience, we strive M-100% to produce the finest quality strawberries Y-100% K-10% and raspberries, blackberries , and also produce all our own homemade jam. Fresh as nature intended.

We invite you to try out our freshly picked juicy fruits at any of our stalls in Wicklow town, Avoca Kilmacanogue or in the People’s Park, market in Dun Laoghaire on Sunday’s.

We also work with other local producers and also supply other products like natural fruit juices, cherries, Wexford Honey, Kildare blueberries and Wexford Queen potatoes.

AN BORD BIA APPROVED

You can also buy direct from our farm outside Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford and all visitors are welcome. Fresh and frozen fruit is available on the farm, where you can also buy fruit for jam and juice making, smoothies etc.

Curraghgraigue, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. • sales@kearnsfruitfarm.ie Find us on Facebook www.kearnsfruitfarm.ie. For more details, Office: 053 9255495 Mob: 087 6630347//087 8241978.

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FOOD

The Flynn brothers also have a farm as part of The Happy Pear, with a view to making foods such as wheatgrass and sprouts more widely available. “Darragh, our younger brother, started this part of the business and runs all things farm,” Stephen says. “He is the type of guy who a bird would land on his shoulder or a squirrel would climb up his leg to sit on his shoulder.” In the summer of 2013 they also partnered with a local farm in Wicklow and took over the running of a cherry and plum farm. “It’s such a fun thing to be part of – picking cherries with friends and family in a sun-filled tunnel amongst cherry trees that are laden with the most delicious fruit. It doesn’t get much better! There is a huge amount of work, but it is something we are very passionate about. Growing food is such an important part of the business and an area that we are sure we will expand on.”

A BENEFICIAL LIFESTYLE According to Stephen, vegetable-based diets have many benefits. “If someone is eating a predominantly wholefood plant-based diet, they will be eating a high-fibre, low-calorie, low-fat diet that is high in vitamins, is nutrient-dense and has virtually no dietary cholesterol. As a result, they will be at a much lower risk of ever suffering from the typical western diseases of affluence such as heart disease,

“We’re not trying to convert anyone to be vegetarians, vegans or raw foodist, we just want to encourage people to eat more veg and to be happy.” type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer, etc,” he explains. “According to the China Study conducted by Dr Colin T Campbell – one of the greatest studies done, examining the effects of diet and disease – the more wholefood plant-based foods one eats, the more one is moving towards optimum health and the more refined and animal foods one eats, the more one moves towards chronic illness.

“At the end of the day, the most important thing in life, we feel, is to be happy and health is one of the most fundamental factors that impacts on our happiness. We’re not trying to convert anyone to be vegetarians, vegans or raw foodist, we just want to encourage people to eat more veg and to be happy,” he says.

Other benefits can include weight loss

and increased energy levels, while eating more wholefoods and plant-based foods can also be economical for those on a budget. “Generally the most expensive thing in the typical western diet is the meat or fish, so wholefood plant-based eating can be very cheap. Typical poor societies exist on beans and wholegrains as they’re cheap and nourishing,” he says.

This year the twins brought out a cookbook featuring over 100 of their recipes. It has been shortlisted for the Avonmore Cookbook of the Year prize at the 2014 Irish Book Awards. “Education is a huge focus for Dave and me,” Stephen says. To that end, they are running the Happy Heart course – a classroom health education course and an online education course that guides participants in how to lower their cholesterol and reverse heart disease.

“Being chefs, we’re very good at applying leading science around healthy eating.

One of our main skills is how to eat these healthy foods and make them taste great.

Everyone wants to be happy and if you’re healthy it’s easier to be happy, look good and feel good. But not everyone knows how to actually eat healthy and this is what we’re really good at.” With such enthusiasm and positivity, The Happy Pear is sure to pique the interest of vegetable sceptics and encourage them that vegetables aren’t so boring after all. ● EAR TO THE GROUND 153

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C a p t ’n

fish fingers

fish bites

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For Perfect Grassland

Jack

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Heavy duty, 100% rubber agricultural matting and flooring system for slats, cubicles, collecting yards, passages, milk parlours. Authorised agents for EASYFIX RUBBER PRODUCTS. Some of our agricultural products include:

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20/11/2014 18:01 09/12/2014 14:02

GUARANTEED IRISH

MAKE

Every Day AN Irish Day

Guaranteed Irish has a simple mission: to increase awareness of and demand for Irish goods and services. Louise Donnery reports.

G

uaranteed Irish has its roots back in 1975, when it was first established by the Irish Goods Council with the aim of creating jobs in Ireland. However, after a European Court ruling prohibiting the operation of such a scheme by a state-funded agency, the project took its first steps as an independent non-profit company in 1984. They recently celebrated their 30th anniversary, and solidified their importance in the Irish economy.

In recent years our country has seen the emergence of a movement towards buying more locally made Irish products, and it is organisations like Guaranteed Irish that help support such a growing ethos. When an Irish company meets the standards set by Guaranteed Irish, they display the symbol proudly on their products and it is this symbol that makes shopping for Irish products and services an easy task for consumers. Shoppers can be sure that when they purchase Guaranteed Irish goods they are supporting Irish companies and safeguarding jobs around the country – and when Irish products compete with their foreign competitors for price and quality, it is a good day for the economy.

Tom Rae, Director of Guaranteed Irish, believes that Irish companies are becoming more and more competitive in a market that is currently flooded with so many products. “Irish companies have developed a reputation for quality. Products that display the Guaranteed Irish logo know that in a increasingly competitive market it can supply a decisive edge. It’s a mark of quality. That makes it a valuable, respected marketing tool,” he says.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Director of Guaranteed Irish, Tom Rea; Taoiseach Enda Kenny at the 30th Anniversary Gala; Shop For Ireland; Big Red Kitchen products. TOP OF PAGE: Bunbury Boards

BUYING IRISH Recent research has proven that we do not need to make a dramatic change in the amount of money we are spending on Irish products. The research, carried out

by Guaranteed Irish, revealed that an extra 4 spent on Irish products per household per week could result in the creation of 6,000 more jobs in Ireland. When approached about their experiences with shopping for Irish products, 86 per cent of consumers felt that Irish companies should do more to highlight the fact that they are 100 per cent home grown.

Guaranteed Irish products are readily available to consumers, with over 250 Irish companies displaying the logo on their packaging.

When we buy Irish, we directly influence our economy in positive ways.

Every euro we spend in our community

has a knock-on effect that can extend far beyond that of the profits made by the businesses who take our money in return for goods and services.

Our support can lead to the success of many Irish businesses, which could mean a larger tax revenue for the government to invest in our own communities.

Guaranteed Irish insist that the idea is not to solely buy Irish products, but to consider supporting Irish-made products as often as we can.

Tom Rae is delighted at the combined efforts of the Irish public in helping to support Irish companies and to counteract the effects of the economic downturn.

“Supporting Irish-made products is part of the recovery programme and we are delighted with the support we are receiving from our membership and the consumer demand.” ● EAR TO THE GROUND 155

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

BELOW: Stanley Donard range cooker. RIGHT: Stanley Supreme Deluxe.

Hearth OF THE

Home

Stanley offers a range of designs which seamlessly combine classic looks and practical usage.

For over 75 years, Stanley has been making cast-iron range cookers in Waterford for Irish families. Today, we offer classic designs with contemporary convenience: All the superb features you love – but now faster to warm-up, easier to use, and with separate control of cooking, heating and hot water.

Our suite of cookers caters to every need for the modern home - range cooking, hot water or central heating. For generations Stanley’s solid fuel range cookers have brought warmth to homes and hot food to families. There are three solid fuel range cooker options which are a continuing popular lifestyle and economic choice for

many homes.

Continuous innovation has seen the introduction of the Brandon Condensing cooker which offers highly efficient condensing heating technology, with the same excellent cooking performance as the existing oil cooker range.

The Stanley Supreme Deluxe, with sleek elegant lines and lustrous enamel finish combines the much loved, timeless good looks of the traditional Stanley Cast Iron Range cooker with the latest 21st century technology to produce a cooker that not

only looks fantastic but has the added attraction of ease of installation and state-ofthe-art cooking functions. All of our cookers come in a variety of colours to ensure they compliment any style of kitchen.

At Stanley, we understand that your lifestyle is always changing. In today’s busy modern home, style is as important as good cooking and economic heating. Stanley’s commitment to enduring performance and timeless designs ensure that whatever your lifestyle, there’s a Stanley range for you.

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Producing handmade Irish cheeses since 1986 using the milk of our own herd.

Phone: +353 504 45112 E-mail: info@cooleeney.com

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Gloriously good Irish jams “Made with only the finest quality fruit, sugar and a dash of lemon juice, it’s this care and purity that makes them so utterly delicious. I hope you love their homemade taste.” Helen Gee

Our product range include: JAMS, MARMALADES, JELLIES RELISHES, CHUTNEY AND SAUCES All our products are 100% natural.

Available in 340g for retail and 3.5kg and 30g for catering.

Tel: +353 (0) 57 8731058 ~ Email: sales@gsgourmetjams.ie ~ www.gsgourmetjams.ie 233030_2L_GsJams_CMD_ETTG.indd 1

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

Quality TO THE HIGHEST STANDARD

McGeough’s Connemara Fine Foods and award winning air dried Connemara lamb has a long established reputation for quality and unique food products, the mouth watering and exclusive Connemara air dried lamb and smoked meats have gained praise and recognition from leading food critics both nationally and around the world. Connemara Fine Foods has the potential to grow even further according to food Critic John Mc Kenna: “Of all the younger generation of Irish butchers, James McGeough may be the most distinctive and determined,” (Bridgestone Irish Food Guide 2007).

PASSION From small beginnings in the heart of Connemara, McGeough’s Butchers, located in Oughterard, Co Galway is now one of Ireland’s leading specialist meat innovators. As well as the unparalleled, distinctive taste of the air dried Connemara lamb it shows the versatility of the meat and exciting dishes which can be developed. Influenced by his training in Germany, James McGeough joined his father Eamonn in the family business in 1990 having spent six years training to

become the only German Master Butcher in Ireland. With his passion for food, exciting tastes and flavours and his flair for perfection and innovation, James experimented and developed McGeough’s award winning traditional Connemara Lamb using air drying methods along with smoked beef, pork, salamis and other meat delicacies. This knowledge, tradition, innovation and passion for food is now being passed on to the third generation of the Mc Geough family.

James’s son, ( in photograph) Justin now brings his idea’s and work ethic to the family business, ensuring his father’s and grandfather’s skills and heritage are retained with the ambition to continue to deliver quality food products to a very loyal customer base.

LOCAL PRODUCE All meat is sourced locally, dried by the purest Connemara air in the first air dried EU food producer in Ireland, located alongside the family butcher shop.

The air dried lamb has a very distinct flavour influenced again by McGeough’s time in Germany. The process takes up to eight months. Initially the meat is cured

with local Connemara herbs and berries for over five weeks. It is turned daily to ensure adequate moisture in each piece.

After the curing period, the meat is hung for eight months in drying rooms which enhances the flavour. The meat is then smoked for twelve hours before it reaches gourmet perfection and is ready for the marketplace.

Innovation is the lifeblood of McGeoughs. In 2006, the company made a major investment to the business in Oughterard bringing it to the highest EU standards. Over thirty two thousand slices of McGeough’s dried lamb was served at the Ryder Cup 2006 at the K Club. The company has won many food awards in Germany, Holland, the UK and Ireland, the most recent in 2008 at The Great Taste awards in London, the sausage and pudding competition in Dublin, and Blas na hEireann in Dingle.

For more information on Mc Geoughs Connemara Fine Foods please see www.connemarafinefoods.ie or Tel: +353 (0)91 552351

PHOTOGRAPHY: JOANNE MURPHY

For quality food products, look no further than McGeough’s Connemara Fine Foods.

158 EAR TO THE GROUND

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

Quality TO THE HIGHEST STANDARD

McGeough’s Connemara Fine Foods and award winning air dried Connemara lamb has a long established reputation for quality and unique food products, the mouth watering and exclusive Connemara air dried lamb and smoked meats have gained praise and recognition from leading food critics both nationally and around the world. Connemara Fine Foods has the potential to grow even further according to food critic John Mc Kenna: “Of all the younger generation of Irish butchers, James McGeough may be the most distinctive and determined,” (Bridgestone Irish Food Guide 2007).

PASSION From small beginnings in the heart of Connemara, McGeough’s Butchers, located in Oughterard, Co Galway is now one of Ireland’s leading specialist meat innovators. As well as the unparalleled, distinctive taste of the air dried Connemara lamb it shows the versatility of the meat and exciting dishes which can be developed. Influenced by his training in Germany, James McGeough joined his father Eamonn in the family business in 1990 having spent six years training to

become the only German Master Butcher in Ireland. With his passion for food, exciting tastes and flavours and his flair for perfection and innovation, James experimented and developed McGeough’s award winning traditional Connemara Lamb using air drying methods along with smoked beef, pork, salamis and other meat delicacies. This knowledge, tradition, innovation and passion for food is now being passed on to the third generation of the Mc Geough family.

James’s son, (in photograph) Justin now brings his idea’s and work ethic to the family business, ensuring his father’s and grandfather’s skills and heritage are retained with the ambition to continue to deliver quality food products to a very loyal customer base.

LOCAL PRODUCE All meat is sourced locally, dried by the purest Connemara air in the first air dried EU food producer in Ireland, located alongside the family butcher shop.

The air dried lamb has a very distinct flavour influenced again by McGeough’s time in Germany. The process takes up to eight months. Initially the meat is cured

with local Connemara herbs and berries for over five weeks. It is turned daily to ensure adequate moisture in each piece.

After the curing period, the meat is hung for eight months in drying rooms which enhances the flavour. The meat is then smoked for twelve hours before it reaches gourmet perfection and is ready for the marketplace.

Innovation is the lifeblood of McGeoughs. In 2006, the company made a major investment to the business in Oughterard bringing it to the highest EU standards. Over thirty two thousand slices of McGeough’s dried lamb was served at the Ryder Cup 2006 at the K Club. The company has won many food awards in Germany, Holland, the UK and Ireland, the most recent in 2008 at The Great Taste awards in London, the sausage and pudding competition in Dublin, and Blas na hEireann in Dingle.

For more information on Mc Geoughs Connemara Fine Foods please see www.connemarafinefoods.ie or Tel: +353 (0)91 552351

PHOTOGRAPHY: JOANNE MURPHY

For quality food products, look no further than McGeough’s Connemara Fine Foods.

158 EAR TO THE GROUND

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ARTISAN FOOD

Tradition Craft &

IN IRELAND’S ARTISAN SCENE

Artisan food, produced by experts using the best of ingredients, is a more and more familiar term these days. Louise Donnery checks in with some of Ireland’s leading artisan producers.

T

here is no single definition of artisan food.

Artisan producers have an understanding and respect for the raw materials with which they work; they know where these materials come from and what is particularly good about them. They have mastered their craft and have a historical, experiential, intuitive and scientific understanding of what makes their products unique.

COOLEENEY CHEESE Cooleeny Cheese began due to the unbridled enthusiasm of one of its founders, Breda Maher. Breda had been surrounded by top-quality home-produced food for her entire life, and when she married a dairy farmer she was provided with an abundance of quality raw produce: milk. She began her passion for cheesemaking through education. “I took myself off to UCC, did some cheesemaking courses, and made cheese in a farm in Cavan. A year later we started making cheese for the marketplace and the rest is history.” Cooleeney Farm has been lovingly maintained through four generations of the Maher family. They have a pedigree Friesian dairy herd, which receives expert care from the family. Cooleeney Farm is located in the middle of prime dairy land – the ‘Tipperary Dairy Country’. “We’re situated right on the brow of boggy, peaty land, which has rich soil producing great grass for our milk and cheesemaking. The cheese is very dependent on the milk, which is dependent on the food the animals eat. All the milk is produced from our own herd and the goats’ milk comes from local goat farmers.” Breda admits their “best seller by a long shot would be Cooleeny Soft Cheese, followed closely by Darú and Gortnamona.” Gortnamona is a soft goat’s cheese, with a mild and creamy flavour and a delicate aroma of white mushroom from the rind, while Darú is a semi-hard cheese, with a mild and buttery flavour, and notes of earth and cellar coming through from the rind.

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ARTISAN FOOD

NOLAN BUTCHERS OF KILCULLEN Nolan Butchers of Kilcullen, a small village in Co Kildare, is ahead of its time regarding the quality of its produce, but retains all the charm and tradition it possessed when first established in 1886.

Currently run by James and Emma Nolan, James is the fourth generation of the Nolan family to run this thriving business.

Nolans of Kilcullen is unique in its facilities. The award-winning store has its own EU-approved abattoir, boning hall, processing hall, curing facility and its own farm just 200 meters from the store. This provides James with unrivalled control over everything from “farm to fork”. All their beef comes from the Nolan farm or local farmers, and there is an approved traceability system in place. Nolans make their own sausages and black and white puddings fresh on site, from recipes that have been handed down generations. Nolans has won numerous awards at the Irish Craft Butchers competitions, and took home the coveted award of Best Butchers in the UK and Ireland from the Countryside Alliance, presented at the House of Lords in London in 2012. When one considers they were chosen from over 3,000 butchers, it stands to reason that the quality of their produce is among the very best on the market. Their home-cured spiced beef, a traditional festive favourite at Christmas, has also won many national titles.

In November 2014 they won the award for the Best Festive Product with their low-salt home-baked ham at the European Fins Goustiers awards in France, which celebrate the finest foods around Europe. Nolan’s store is more than a butchers; it offers customers an array of culinary delights, sourced from many local artisan producers – from its delicatessen, fish counter, fruit and vegetables, breads and cheeses to fine wine. Nolans has been a staple in the Kilcullen community for generations, has a knowledgeable and friendly team of staff that have helped build the business through the years, and has become, as James says, “a place to meet, to buy your meat!”

SAGE RESTAURANT Sage Restaurant in Midleton, Co Cork is a restaurant providing unrivalled quality food due to its unique ethos of “12 miles”.

Produce is sourced locally, 12 miles or less from the doors of the kitchen that serves up some of Ireland’s most exciting dishes.

Owner Kevin Aherne is a young and enthusiastic chef named as one of Ireland’s Ten Hot Chefs of the Year in 2013. It was his enthusiasm for fresh, quality produce that inspired 12 miles.

“Inspiration came from what was around me at the time; we’re located in an area of Cork where we’re lucky enough to be in an abundance of produce. For me, local cooking is just within the 12 mile line that I set myself.” Aherne’s talent as a chef ensures that justice is done to quality produce. The Sage kitchen is under his watchful eye, and he never falters in his pursuit of captivating his guests with the best perfectly presented food. Sage’s menu can be best described as “modern Irish”, incorporating different elements and cooking techniques from Europe, Asia and the Americas, and combining them with the more traditional elements of Irish cooking. However, don’t expect the menus to be the same when you return, as Aherne regularly revamps them to reflect seasonal produce. Aherne also acknowledges the influence his skilled staff have on the menus. “The menu reflects the produce, the kitchen staff and myself; the more time you’re in your job, the better you get at it and the more educated you

become. Where we are now and where we were five years ago; we’re at a different level of technical cooking.” Sage offers diners a unique experience – complete transparency about the origin of the produce on their plates, which have been combined to create a truly memorable dining experience. If ever you have the opportunity to enjoy the atmosphere and food at Sage, do so with the knowledge that everything on your plate was sourced just a stone’s throw from where you are sitting.

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Nolan’s of Kilcullen CRAFT BUTCHERS - SINCE 1886 Winner of Best Butchers Shop in the U.K. & Ireland, London 2012 Unique Irish owned business with Nolan’s own Farm, E.U. approved Abattoir, Boning Hall, Processing Hall, Curing Facility - and their award winning Shop.

For all your Christmas Turkeys, Low Salt Hams, Gold Medal Winning Spiced Beef and other festive food enquiries please ring Nolan’s at 045 / 481229 or visit www.nolansofkilcullen.com or find us on Facebook

WINNER

WINNER

Winner

WINNER

Winner

of the Best Festive Meat Product at the European Fins Goustier Awards in France, November 2014 with their own Low Salt Home Baked Ham.

of the Irish Pig Society - Best Traditional Pork Sausage in Ireland in 2014.

of the best White Pudding & best Spiced Beef in Ireland at Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland Awards September, 2012

of the Best Traditional Pork Sausages in Ireland at the Fin Goustier Awards, November 2012

of the Retail Excellence Ireland Award for the Best large Retail Store in Ireland, 2008.

Champion Butcher Shop of Ireland 2010.

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Culinary expression of great produce sourced from within 12 miles of our front door. Our 12 mile ethos is simple. We source the vast majority of our produce from within 12 miles of the restaurant.

The lush farmland and dedicated farmers of Midleton and its hinterland enables us to source all our meat from within this radius. All our poultry is reared by “12 Mile” farmers and is free-range. Our fish is trawled and line-caught by East Cork fleets in Irish waters.

When the seasons allow, our vegetables, fruit and herbs are grown by “12 mile” farmers and growers or foraged by Kevin. All our producers are united in their aim to bring us high-quality produce with minimal environmental impact.

Much time and enjoyment is spent continually sourcing great produce from the hard-working producers of our local area. We hope you enjoy the fruits of our labour.

Tuesday to Sunday - Lunch & Dinner www.sageresteraunt.ie

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Enjoy a glass of magh Cider or Mollys Mulled Ar Apple Honeyhill Spiced Christmas this

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ARTISAN FOOD

G’S GOURMET JAMS G’s Gourmet Jams in Abbeyleix, Co Laois was founded by Helen Gee in 1998, and is a family-run business. From an early age Helen watched her mother Elizabeth masterfully create food, and she developed a love for traditional home cooking. Her mother inspired her to start the company. “It goes back to my childhood really: my mother was always a great cook, and I always loved cooking.” G’s Gourmet Jams are made in the traditional way that we might remember our mothers or grandmothers doing. “It’s just saucepans, there’s nothing in them only fruit and sugar. We put in the fruit, cook it slowly and then add the sugar, boil it, pot it and that’s it!” Only the best quality ingredients go into the jams – they don’t add any artificial flavours or perservatives, a fact that provides a destinctive home-cooked taste. They source most of their fruit from their own farm, and Helen has grown a thriving enterprise from the humble berries up. G’s Gourmet Jams thrives due to Helen’s and her family’s dedication to their work and following the ethos of providing quality products. Helen’s husband Cyril works the farm from which they source their fruit, her son Clive handles the logistics of the company, while her daughter Sandra handles the HR and business development, leaving Helen to dedicate her time to create new

and exciting recipes for her jams, jellies, chutneys and marmaldes. G’s Gourmet Jams have been available in retail for some time now, and have recently broken into the food service sector, with huge success. G’s Gourmet Jams produce everything from classic family favourites like raspberry and strawberry jam to Irish whiskey marmalade, and made the jump into chutneys in more recent years,

experimenting (quite successfully) with flavours such as lemon mint jelly and brandy butter. However, Helen has no problem choosing her personal favourite jam. “My favourite jam is blackberry and apple and it goes back to my childhood.

We used to pick blackberries and we’d go down to the orchard, pick the apples and make the jam on the old Aga cooker. I still remember the smell of that.”

ARMAGH CIDER COMPANY The Armagh Cider Company began in 2006 and has been producing top quality artisan cider ever since. Armagh is the orchard of Ireland, and one of the largest areas for growing apples in the UK and Ireland. Helen Troughton, along with her husband Philip, are the founders of Armagh Cider, and after spying a gap in the market started the first cider company in Northern Ireland. After gaining a wealth of experience having their apple crop made into cider by a master cider maker in England, they decided to bring the whole process home to Ballinteggart.

Since 2009, every bottle of cider sold under their name has been made entirely on their own farm – “from blossom to bottle.” All of Armagh Cider’s apples are hand-harversted, pressed and fermented before being blended and bottled. While Armagh Cider is a relatively new company, the orchard from which they harvest their apples has been around for generations.

Ballinteggart House has been in the Troughton family since 1898, and the orchards there have been nutured and matured for years. The Armagh Cider

company have over 80 acres of orchard in production, supplying all their needs for cider-making. Helen is keen to highlight how Armagh Cider differs from others on the market. “Our ciders are made with a blend of Armagh bramley apple, which have a PGI status (meaning that they are exclusively produced locally, and only four products are classified as PGI in Ireland); eating apples and cider apples.

We have full traceability of our apples.

We are the only cider producer that does.” Armagh Cider currently has two ciders in production, the Carson Crisp and the Maddens Mellow, both of which have won countless awards for everything from taste to branding design, and more exciting options are in the development stage. Helen says they are “proud of our provenance and our aim is to make a quality product with natural ingredients without the use of artificial additives.

We are aware that today, consumers expect value for money, so we have invested heavily in equipment to enable us to produce and bottle as efficiently as possible without compromising the quality of the product”.

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RECIPES Lentil casserole with salsiccia

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Winter days may be dark and dismal but a bubbling pot of delicious, home-cooked stew is the ideal comfort food.

Long, slow cooking delivers maximum flavour. Whether you love a traditional stew or like to ring the changes with a few interesting ingredients the following recipes will deliver pots of pleasure all winter long.

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RECIPES

LENTIL CASSEROLE WITH SALSICCIA Serves 4-6

TIP: This serves 4 as a main course or 6 as a side dish.

6 Italian cooking sausages (salsiccia) 500g Puy lentils 2 cloves of garlic finely chopped 2 carrots diced 4 sticks celery diced 1 large onion diced 1 ltr vegetable stock 1 tsp chilli flakes 1 bay leaf 2 tbs fresh parsley chopped 4 tbs olive oil Salt Pepper Heat 2tbs of olive oil in a wide bottomed pan. Add the onions, carrots and celery and sweat gently for 10 minutes, without colouring, until tender. Stir in the garlic, bay leaves and chilli flakes and cook for a further 2 minutes before adding the lentils. Add the chicken stock, stir gently and increase the heat until boiling. Reduce to a simmer and cover. In the meantime fry the sausages in another pan for approximately 8 minutes until browned. Add the lentils and cook for a further 10-15 minutes until the lentils are tender but not soft.

Remove the bay leaves, stir in the parsley and remaining 2tbs of olive oil. Season to taste. Serve with toasted ciabatta or crusty bread.

VEGETARIAN ALTERNATIVE: Omit the sausage and serve with crumbled fresh feta cheese and sundried tomatoes.

LAYERED VEGETABLE BAKE Serves 6 1kg waxy potatoes 500g celeriac or parsnips 500g swede or carrots 400ml vegetable stock 200g parmeasan or similar cheese, grated 250ml cream 2 cloves garlic sliced 2 tsp thyme leaves 50g butter Salt Pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 200째C. Heat the cream and garlic in a saucepan, bring to the boil and then turn off the heat. Peel and finely slice the vegetables using a knife or mandoline. Butter a 28cm wide x 6cm deep pyrex or ceramic gratin dish. Place an even layer of potatoes on the bottom, season with salt, pepper and thyme. Repeat with the celeriac and then swede. Continue and finish with a layer of potato. Pour over the cream with garlic.

Add about half of the stock, being careful to keep 2cm clear at the top of the dish.

Sprinkle the top with the grated cheese, dot with the remaining butter and cover with baking foil. Place in the oven and cook for 50 minutes. Remove the foil after the first 30 minutes and add a little more stock if necessary.

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RECIPES

LENTIL CASSEROLE WITH SALSICCIA Serves 4-6

TIP: This serves 4 as a main course or 6 as a side dish.

6 Italian cooking sausages (salsiccia) 500g Puy lentils 2 cloves of garlic finely chopped 2 carrots diced 4 sticks celery diced 1 large onion diced 1 ltr vegetable stock 1 tsp chilli flakes 1 bay leaf 2 tbs fresh parsley chopped 4 tbs olive oil Salt Pepper Heat 2tbs of olive oil in a wide bottomed pan. Add the onions, carrots and celery and sweat gently for 10 minutes, without colouring, until tender. Stir in the garlic, bay leaves and chilli flakes and cook for a further 2 minutes before adding the lentils. Add the chicken stock, stir gently and increase the heat until boiling. Reduce to a simmer and cover. In the meantime fry the sausages in another pan for approximately 8 minutes until browned. Add to the lentils and cook for a further 10-15 minutes until the lentils are tender but not soft. Remove the bay leaves, stir in the parsley and remaining 2tbs of olive oil. Season to taste. Serve with toasted ciabatta or crusty bread.

VEGETARIAN ALTERNATIVE: Omit the sausage and serve with crumbled fresh feta cheese and sundried tomatoes.

LAYERED VEGETABLE BAKE Serves 6 1kg waxy potatoes 500g celeriac or parsnips 500g swede or carrots 400ml vegetable stock 200g parmeasan or similar cheese, grated 250ml cream 2 cloves garlic sliced 2 tsp thyme leaves 50g butter Salt Pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 200째C. Heat the cream and garlic in a saucepan, bring to the boil and then turn off the heat. Peel and finely slice the vegetables using a knife or mandoline. Butter a 28cm wide x 6cm deep pyrex or ceramic gratin dish. Place an even layer of potatoes on the bottom, season with salt, pepper and thyme. Repeat with the celeriac and then swede. Continue and finish with a layer of potato. Pour over the cream with garlic.

Add about half of the stock, being careful to keep 2cm clear at the top of the dish.

Sprinkle the top with the grated cheese, dot with the remaining butter and cover with baking foil. Place in the oven and cook for 50 minutes. Remove the foil after the first 30 minutes and add a little more stock if necessary.

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RECIPES

RED CABBAGE SALAD WITH POMEGRANATE AND BRAZIL NUTS

Serves 4

1/2 head red cabbage 2 medium carrots 100g Brazil nuts 1 pomegranate 2 tbs balsamic vinegar 2 tsp honey

Heat the honey and balsamic in a small pan until reduced by half, allow to cool. Finely shred the red cabbage and carrot and combine in a large bowl.

Roughly chop the Brazil nuts. Split the pomegranate in half and extract the seeds with a teaspoon.

Combine the balsamic dressing with the vegetables.

CHICKEN AND LEEK PIE

Serves 4-6

500g fresh chicken meat, skinned, boned and cubed 80g pancetta or streaky bacon, diced 2 leeks, cleaned and sliced 2 sticks of celery diced 1 carrot diced 1 clove of garlic, sliced 200ml cream 300ml stock 1 tbs fresh parsley 1 tsp fresh thyme 2 tbs vegetable oil 300g readymade short crust or puff pastry Beaten egg or milk to glaze Salt Pepper Preheat the oven to 190째C. Heat the oil in a deep casserole or saucepan. Gently fry the diced bacon or pancetta for 3-4 minutes until lightly browned. Add the chicken and continue to cook for 7 minutes, then add garlic and vegetables and cook for a further 10 minutes without browning. Add the thyme, cream and stock and simmer for 20 minutes.

Remove the meat and vegetables to a deep pie dish. Rapidly boil the remaining sauce to reduce by about half to a coating consistency, check seasoning and adjust if necessary.

Leave to cool. Roll out the pastry, pour the cooled sauce over the meat and vegetables.

Make a pastry lid, securing to the pie dish with beaten egg or milk. Brush the top with beaten egg, prick the pastry with a fork. Place on the middle shelf of the oven and cook for 20-30 minutes until golden brown. Serve with mashed potatoes and buttered peas.

LAMB AND ROOT VEGETABLE STEW

Serves 4-6

1kg stewing lamb, cubed 500g potatoes, peeled and cubed 2 large onions, chopped 4 medium carrots, sliced thickly 4 sticks of celery, sliced thickly 4 tbs barley 1 tin tomatoes 1ltr lamb or vegetable stock 2 bay leaves 1 tsp thyme leaves 1 tbs honey 4 tbs vegetable oil 2 tbs cornflour or plain flour 1 tsp ground cumin Salt & Pepper

Heat 2tsp of oil in a large casserole dish.

Combine the cornflour or plain flour with the cumin, 1tsp salt and a good pinch of pepper. Toss the lamb in the seasoned flour. Shake off any excess and fry the lamb, in batches, in the oil until browned.

Set the lamb aside and add the remaining oil to the casserole dish. Add the onion and sweat without colouring for 5 minutes, add the carrots and continue to cook for 5 more minutes before returning the lamb to the pan. Add in the tomatoes, stock, honey and barley. Combine gently and season. Bring to the boil and add the potato chunks. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cover the casserole.

Continue to cook on the stove-top or place in an oven pre-heated to 130째C for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the lid and cook for a further 30 minutes.

Serve in deep bowls.

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RECIPES

RED CABBAGE SALAD WITH POMEGRANATE AND BRAZIL NUTS

Serves 4

1/2 head red cabbage 2 medium carrots 100g Brazil nuts 1 pomegranate 2 tbs balsamic vinegar 2 tsp honey

Heat the honey and balsamic in a small pan until reduced by half, allow to cool. Finely shred the red cabbage and carrot and combine in a large bowl.

Roughly chop the Brazil nuts. Split the pomegranate in half and extract the seeds with a teaspoon.

Combine the balsamic dressing with the vegetables.

Sprinkle with the Brazil nuts and pomegranate seeds.

CHICKEN AND LEEK PIE

Serves 4-6

500g fresh chicken meat, skinned, boned and cubed 80g pancetta or streaky bacon, diced 2 leeks, cleaned and sliced 2 sticks of celery diced 1 carrot diced 1 clove of garlic, sliced 200ml cream 300ml stock 1 tbs fresh parsley 1 tsp fresh thyme 2 tbs vegetable oil 300g readymade short crust or puff pastry Beaten egg or milk to glaze Salt Pepper Preheat the oven to 190째C. Heat the oil in a deep casserole or saucepan. Gently fry the diced bacon or pancetta for 3-4 minutes until lightly browned. Add the chicken and continue to cook for 7 minutes, then add garlic and vegetables and cook for a further 10 minutes without browning. Add the thyme, cream and stock and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove the meat and vegetables to a deep pie dish. Rapidly boil the remaining sauce to reduce by about half to a coating consistency, check seasoning and adjust if necessary. Leave to cool. Roll out the pastry, pour the cooled sauce over the meat and vegetables. Make a pastry lid, securing to the pie dish with beaten egg or milk. Brush the top with beaten egg, prick the pastry with a fork. Place on the middle shelf of the oven and cook for 20-30 minutes until golden brown.

Serve with mashed potatoes and buttered peas or broccoli.

LAMB AND ROOT VEGETABLE STEW

Serves 4-6

1kg stewing lamb, cubed 500g potatoes, peeled and cubed 2 large onions, chopped 4 medium carrots, sliced thickly 4 sticks of celery, sliced thickly 4 tbs barley 1 tin tomatoes 1ltr lamb or vegetable stock 2 bay leaves 1 tsp thyme leaves 1 tbs honey 4 tbs vegetable oil 2 tbs cornflour or plain flour 1 tsp ground cumin Salt & Pepper

Heat 2tsp of oil in a large casserole dish.

Combine the cornflour or plain flour with the cumin, 1tsp salt and a good pinch of pepper. Toss the lamb in the seasoned flour. Shake off any excess and fry the lamb, in batches, in the oil until browned.

Set the lamb aside and add the remaining oil to the casserole dish. Add the onion and sweat without colouring for 5 minutes, add the carrots and continue to cook for 5 more minutes before returning the lamb to the pan. Add in the tomatoes, stock, honey and barley. Combine gently and season. Bring to the boil and add the potato chunks. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cover the casserole.

Continue to cook on the stove-top or place in an oven pre-heated to 130째C for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the lid and cook for a further 30 minutes.

Serve in deep bowls.

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RECIPES

Chicken and leek pie

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Kilrush Farmers Market

for community shopping at its best!

At the square every Thursday 9 to 2 pm.

Meet your local, artisan producers, crafters and growers.

We have a large variety of unique Christmas goodies and gifts at reasonable prices. Merry Christmas to all and wishing you a happy and healthy New Year!

BARRONS

CRUSTY WELL BAKED BREAD AND WATERFORD BLAA

Final market of 2014 takes place on 18th December.

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MAHON POINT FARMERS MARKET

Every Thursday 10am-2pm

Outside the Mahon Point Shopping Centre, Co. Cork

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O’Keeffe’s has received the Georgina Campbell award 2014 for our large selection of locally produced artisan foods in both our deli and on our shelves. At O’Keeffe’s we have have a true devotion to good Irish food, so when you buy local you can buy local high quality Irish foods.

The market takes place every Thursday from 9.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. on the Parade, Kilkenny, in the shadows of Kilkenny Castle. If you are visiting Kilkenny on a Thursday, it is definitely worth stopping by to wander through the 20 stalls, selling products from unusual plants, home baked cakes, fresh juices, pates, delicious breads, organic vegetables, handmade chocolates, pies, handthrown domestic stoneware pottery, willow baskets and willow garden structures and natural handmade soap, face care and body care products.

2/3 Wellington road, St Lukes Cross, Cork city Phone: 021-4502010

Relax in a lovely atmosphere & meet the stall holders!

CHRISTMAS 2014 FARMERS MARKET WILL BE HELD TUESDAY, 23RD DECEMBER, 2014

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

Changing Times

Noel Gavigan from the Irish BioEnergy Assocation outlines the usefulness of wood as a source of renewable energy.

AT THIS STAGE we all acknowledge that climate change and energy supply will be firmly on the agenda over our lifetime, and for the next few generations.

Following two centuries of global development on the back of coal, oil and gas we now know that fossil fuels cannot continue to be used with wanton abandon. In fact it is largely acknowledged that much of the world’s coal and oil reserves will have to remain in the ground rather than releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere.

IRISH RESOURCES In Ireland we never had ample fossil fuel resources but we do have ample renewable energy resources including biomass/ wood, wind, hydro and even solar energy.

Wood is Europe’s largest source of renewable energy, surpassing wind, solar and hydro. In the last decade wood has grown significantly in importance as a fuel in Ireland, domestic usage of firewood and wood pellets have increased significantly, while woodchip use in industry has also gained some popularity for cost saving measures. It is no secret that wood fuel

popularity is challenged by issues around fuel quality. If the use of wood as a fuel is to fully reach its potential, market suppliers of wood fuels must ensure that quality control is a central consideration. In 2010 the Wood Fuel Quality Assurance (WFQA) Scheme was created to address quality in wood fuel supply and to allow suppliers be certified to a recognised quality mark. In 2014 the WFQA reached an important milestone, certifying its 10th firewood supplier and 14th supplier of wood fuel overall. Over the past 12 months the scheme has taken hold in the market place, certifying eight new entrants to the scheme and seeing certification as a qualifying mark for large supply tenders.

STANDARDS Over the past four to five years homeowners across the country have installed a significant number of solid fuel stoves to keep down heating costs. Indeed many a builders’ merchant will happily state that the boom in stove sales over the past few years has been a very welcome lifeline for

them, while providing a vital source of cheap heating for homeowners. Fueling these stoves with firewood presents a considerable opportunity for the reduction of carbon emissions, reducing fuel imports, reducing costs and providing a ready market for forest owners who produce considerable amounts of firewood as a by-product of proper forest management.

The Wood Fuel Quality Assurance (WFQA) scheme was set up with the support of the Department of Agriculture to ensure wood fuel is produced to proper standards and can therefore build the confidence of users. Firewood is Ireland’s fastest growing fuel source thanks to the recent popularity of stoves in domestic homes. Woodchip and wood pellets are able to deliver savings of up to 55 per cent on heating costs.

The WFQA is overseen by an industry representative steering committee and is run by the Irish BioEnergy Association with the assistance of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine. Anyone looking to join the scheme can check the WFQA website – www.wfqa.org EAR TO THE GROUND 169

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UNCLE AIDAN’S

Flour Power In a world obsessed with the latest technology and the fastest processes, one man has found a niche market by doing things the traditional way. Christine Murray discovers the story behind Uncle Aidan’s stone-ground flour. Photography: Agnes Codd.

F

or John Murphy, making his family’s mill a going concern has long been a dream. The mill has been in his family for more than two centuries, and is enmeshed in his family life. “My uncle and aunt lived there and my father was born there,” he says. “Since I was a young fellah, you know, you’d have great stories of going to the mill. You’d be looking forward to going over because Aidan would be there and he’d be either rolling barley or grinding flour or cutting some timber on the saw bench. You’d be running around the place, there’d be more walkways and gangways than you can imagine, and a

heap of activity for young people.”

While he had always wanted to be involved with the mill, it wasn’t something that Murphy started with immediately.

First he went to agricultural college, then worked on farms and in the building trade until he lost his job during the recession.

Murphy decided that now was the time to make that dream a reality. He talked to his uncle Aidan, who owned the mill, and got the go-ahead to begin the production of traditional stone-ground flour. That generosity also inspired the name of the product: Uncle Aidan’s flour.

TRANSFORMING THE MILL Turning an old structure into a building

that is capable of commercially producing a product was never going to be easy.

Built circa 1790, Ballyminane Mills were originally built to process flax, but started processing corn in the 1830s. The sawmill and the grain mill are both currently operational.

Years ago, a number of mills along the River Urrin used its water for power.

Ballyminane is the last of these still in operation in this traditional way.

Moreover, the wheat used to make Uncle Aidan’s flour is sourced locally from Ballyhamilton Farms.

While the mill has always been in use, it wasn’t operating at anything close to capacity. “The flour mill was never really

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UNCLE AIDAN’S

out of commission,” says Murphy. “The business end of it, people who used to bring wheat to the mill, was getting quieter and quieter over the past ten years. So, up to where I approached Aidan around five or six years ago, my mother was getting some flour ground there for all of us for making bread, Kathleen at the mill was getting some, and there were two other people outside of the family.”

Getting serious production going again involved more than Murphy originally thought, from creating separate bagging and packaging rooms to branding his product. “I didn’t know, sure. I was basically a greenhorn coming in so it was all new and I had to adapt quickly to it. I

made mistakes, still am making mistakes, but not as many!” he laughs.

CHALLENGES One key challenge was making a building that was constructed 200 years ago fully compliant with the modern guidelines set by the Food Safety Authority (FSA).

The rules around food production are notoriously strict, as it is essential to have a high level of hygiene when manufacturing something for human consumption. “At the end of the day they’re only looking out for the welfare of the product itself and where it’s coming from to make sure it’s right for human consumption,” says Murphy. “But [it took] a lot of time, a lot

of money, and a lot of headaches… doing up the mill, getting the bagging room and the packaging room, fly screens and pest control agents. You can imagine, you have woodworm in some of the floors and walls [would] be damp, so you’re trying to restore all that. So it took a lot of time, a lot of money.”

The uniqueness of the Murphy mill, in fact, meant that there were no clear guidelines on what needed to be done.

Representatives from the FSA had to visit several times to inspect the build and to see what needed to happen, but Murphy eventually received all the paperwork needed to be fully compliant. Financing the restoration of a 200 year-old mill is EAR TO THE GROUND 171

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UNCLE AIDAN’S

that!” After three years, Murphy adds, “I’m only starting to see things happening now. I was always told it takes three to five years, and anyone who told me that was spot on.”

not an easy endeavour either. Murphy ploughed his entire savings into the business, and also got a start-up loan from AIB, despite the challenging economic climate when he started.

GETTING ATTENTION In order to boost the profile of the brand more, John appeared on Dragons’ Den in April 2012. The idea was a hit with not just one dragon, but two: Bobby Kerr and Niall O’Farrell chose to invest in the fledgling business, and Murphy is ABOVE: Traditional millstones and equipment make Ballyminane a unique working mill BELOW: The water mill in action

still working with them today. He used the initial investment money to purchase new machinery and branding. While the money was an important part of getting the business going, the main benefit to being on the programme remains the fact that it introduced a wide variety of people to the product. “It’s good exposure, great exposure for my brand,” says Murphy.

It helps, of course, that Uncle Aidan’s flour is a unique product in this day and age. “The uniqueness of the flour is that it’s ground on a set of French burr millstones. They are the old-style millstones that go back to 30 or 40 years ago where everyone got their flour ground at a mill, and every one of those mills had one of these sets of stones. The uniqueness of the stones gives the flour a unique flavour, an authentic flavour, and it distinguishes it from any other product on the market,” says Murphy. The unique flavour is what makes the flour special, but it’s also popular with consumers due to its nutritional profile. Flour that has been stone-ground has been proven to have a lower glycaemic index load than regular flour.

The brand continues to grow, though getting it to be profitable is an uphill struggle. When asked how difficult it is to make a profit with such a traditional business, he jokes: “I’m still working on

NEW CHALLENGES After setting up the mill and getting production going, Murphy has a new basket of issues to overcome, including the challenge of meeting modern demand via traditional methods. “The output of a traditional mill is not as high as the output of a modernised mill,” notes Murphy, who is currently in talks with Shackletons Milling in Ashbourne about increasing the amount of flour that he produces.

While it is important for John that the flour is produced to a high standard, producing flour the traditional way is not the cheapest option. “It’s an area that unfortunately I have to look at, because you have to look at the mill as a whole...

It’s at a crossroads now: do we upgrade the whole mill, which I do not want to do because it’s old and it’s unique and I have other ideas for it? Or do we build our brand and go with an up-to-date mill that can produce the same quality that we can do and grow our brands?” Murphy wonders.

One reason why he doesn’t want to modernise the mill is the pride that his family has in keeping the old facility going.

“The Murphy family – and that goes for my four sisters, my brother, mother and father and Aidan and Kathleen – would be very proud of that mill because it’s a part of us for so long and it always will be a part of the Murphy family.” To be the only working water-powered mill in the country means a great deal, he adds.

Indeed, Murphy believes that the mill is a significant place for the wider community as well as his own family. “It has a tie to an awful lot of people you’d never think of. When I started out, I might meet someone on the road – an oldish person – and they’d say ‘God I remember bringing wheat to that mill’, or ‘I remember bringing a bit of timber’.”

Overall, though, Murphy is happy with the way that the business is unfolding, and grateful to his family for the opportunity to work on it. “I’d like to thank Aidan and Kathleen for supporting me with the mill.

At the end of the day it’s Aidan’s mill.

For allowing me to work it, use it, I’d be indebted to them. For delighted customers who are using the flour, hopefully they’ll keep using it, and for new customers I’d like to welcome them on board. I hope to build a brand in the future and have a range of products with Uncle Aidan, and my ultimate goal would be to make it a household name in Ireland,” he says.

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As one of the longest established hotels in the northwest, renowned for its unique setting in the centre of Donegal Town with idyllic views of Donegal Bay in the background, The Abbey Hotel is a premier venue for music events, activity breaks, and best value accommodation rates in Donegal. The Abbey Hotel is located near beautiful coastal drives and signature discovery points of the Wild Atlantic Way.

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

Knowledge IS

MOST BACTERIA are destroyed during pasteurisation. As a result, the dairy industry depends on pasteurisation to reduce the bacterial count of milk. Spore forming thermoduric bacteria can survive these high temperatures. Processors are testing thermoduric contamination in raw milk and penalties will be issued to farmers not meeting the new specifications. Understanding the main sources of thermoduric bacteria and how to minimise contamination will save time, money and result in better quality milk in the long term. The most effective method to reduce thermoduric spores is to improve farm hygiene.

THE TEAT Research has shown that dirty teats are the primary source of thermoduric contamination in milk. Dirt present on teats may wash off during milking. If spores are present in this dirt it will contaminate the milk. The number of spores present in the milk will depend on the concentration of spores in the dirt and how dirty the teats are. There is a simple way to control this – proper teat preparation. At a minimum, teats should be washed and dried at milking. Individual towels should be used to avoid spreading any possible contamination from one cow to the next. Particular attention should be paid when teats are more likely to be dirty for example, when cows are indoors. Different cleaning methods will have varying effects on the presence of spores in milk. Using a powerful disinfectant like Lir Agri’s Bactolac prior to milking followed by drying with a paper towel will result in a significant reduction in thermoduric bacteria. On farm tests carried out by Lir Agri have shown using Bactolac before and after milking results in a 99 per cent reduction in mastitis causing bacteria on the cow teat. It’s also been shown to be effective against staphylococcus, streptococcus and coliforms resulting in a reduced total bacterial level and improved milk quality.

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should not be allowed build up within the machine as fat and protein laden milk deposits will encourage the growth of bacteria. This in turn promotes the formation of biofilm. Biofilm acts as a safety net for bacteria, providing a barrier against chemicals and heat. An acid based cleaner such as Lir Agri’s Descaler will remove build up of milk deposits, microscopic scale elements such as biofilm as well as mineral desposits such as milkstone. Used once a week the acid-based solution will

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Milking equipment can be an additional source of contamination. A recommended plant cleaning procedure is critical to prevent thermoduric bacteria contaminating milk.

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09/12/2014 16:31

IRISH STOAT

CITIZEN SCIENCE HELPS IRELAND’S

ice age survivor A new project to study the Irish stoat – one of Ireland’s oldest native species – depends on the help of the public, as Laura O’Flynn tells Paula Kerrigan.

C

onsidering the Irish stoat has been resident in Ireland since before the last ice age, it’s about time we got to know this little creature a bit better.

Earlier in 2014, a four-year project into these unique animals was launched by the Animal Ecology and Conservation Group at NUI Galway in association with the Vincent Wildlife Trust. We spoke to PhD student Laura O’Flynn, who is heading up

the project, to see what progress has been made since the launch.

“The Irish stoat is one of Ireland’s true native species and represents an old ecosystem that existed in Ireland way back in the early postglacial period, meaning they were here long before the arrival of mesolithic humans,” says O’Flynn. The Irish stoat (Mustela erminea hibernica) belongs to the mustelid family and is often mistaken for a weasel, but in fact there are no weasels in Ireland. The Irish stoat is quite petite in size, typically measuring just 30cm. It has a white underbelly and thin tail with a black tip. Along with the Irish hare and red deer, the Irish stoat is one of our island’s earliest inhabitants and due to its isolated evolution it has developed differently to its British and European counterparts, right down to its genetic makeup.

Up until recently we have had almost no information on this unassuming animal.

“They’re such an important part of Irish biodiversity and yet we know so little about them,” says O’Flynn. Her study aims to collect crucial information on their distribution, habitat requirements and population dynamics. As yet it’s not possible to even make a population estimate, but as her project progresses we will at last have a base on which to build our understanding so that we can better protect and conserve these indigenous animals.

BIG DATA, SMALL STOAT The most daunting problem facing this project is the ability to collect large quantities of information on this notoriously secretive and hard-to-handle creature. To get around this obstacle, the project is making use of “citizen science”: information supplied by the public. “You’ll never see a stoat when you want to and that’s why these sightings by the public are so valuable to us. People have been getting in touch with all sorts of sightings, stories and photos,” she says.

Social media sites like Facebook have opened up a door and the public are keen to get involved. O’Flynn reports that she has been delighted by the response from

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IRISH STOAT

the public and has been able to record up-to-date and comprehensive data that would previously been prohibitively difficult to obtain.

Farmers are among those who have been most helpful in this citizen science effort, she says. “Farmers are getting in touch to share their stories or encounters with the Irish stoat and speaking very fondly of this little animal,” she says.

Many farmers are delighted to have a stoat on the homestead because they provide excellent vermin control against rats and other small pests. Compared to the mink, which can sometimes be problematic, the stoat seems to be a welcome and unobtrusive addition to most farms. Unfortunately, O’Flynn is finding that many people are reminiscent

that there were more stoats around in times gone by.

One of the most interesting developments that is coming to light even at this early stage is that there have been several stoat sightings in urban areas. “People have reported seeing stoats in very busy industrial estates as well as residential gardens.” Although of course the vast majority of sightings are still in rural areas, the presence of urban stoats suggests that the stoat may have been forced to adapt like its cousin the fox.

MYXOMATOSIS HITS In the 1950s, myxomatosis was introduced in Ireland to control the rabbit population, but because rabbit is one of the stoat’s main foods, the stoat population was very

badly affected. Foxes were also hit badly by the introduction of this virus and they reacted by moving to the cities in search of more resources. The stoat is not as adaptable and was not previously believed to have become urbanised, but this new data suggests that they did eventually follow in the footsteps of their fox counterparts and make their way to the cities. This is just one of many reasons why it’s so vital to get a more comprehensive insight into the population and habits of the stoat in Ireland.

Currently, the information gathered is being turned into a distribution map of stoats all over the island. O’Flynn can add sightings to this map as they come in so that she can identify areas that would be suitable for fieldwork. “The more we find out about them, the more we can devise conservation strategies.”

Even on an international level the stoat has been neglected in conservation research and consequently there isn’t a tried and trusted method to rely on for monitoring these furtive animals. O’Flynn is combining research from hair tubes, footprint tunnels, scat collecting and genetic analysis to better understand the stoat’s habitat requirements and state of the population.

“The Irish stoat is unique to Ireland and we can claim it as our own,” says O’Flynn proudly. Despite the imposing task of collecting a mountain of information, O’Flynn is making significant progress into better understanding the Irish stoat and its place in the changing landscape of Ireland. Public co-operation is the key to the success of this project and O’Flynn urges anyone with a sighting to get in touch. There are a number of ways to submit your own sightings or stories: modern technology has the potential to make everyone a citizen scientist. ● Online Survey: Irish Stoat Survey Facebook: Irish Stoat Project Email: irishstoatsurvey@gmail.com Phone: (091) 492903 or 086 0660208 (Laura O’Flynn, Animal Ecology & Conservation Group, NUI Galway) EAR TO THE GROUND 177

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DESIGN

LEFT: Non-Conformist chair by Eileen Gray.

(Image courtesy of Aram Designs Limited.)

BELOW: Joseph Walsh studios and Enignum Shelf XIII.

Designs ON

2015 A well-overdue Year of Design is taking place in 2015.

Valerie Jordan speaks to Alex Milton, Programme Director, about having a year dedicated to design, the highlights of the year-long event and his wider aim of building a better future through design.

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DESIGN

“We’re very good at promoting certain aspects of Irish creativity, be that literature or music, but design and the creative arts aren’t promoted as heavily.

We have the talent, we’ve just got to be better at shining.”

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DESIGN

I

t’s been designated the year of design, but 2015 is the beginning of a longer journey to celebrate modern Irish designers and traditional craft, to promote innovative design-led thought and to grow and sustain employment.

And it’s long overdue, says Alex Milton, Programme Director of the Year of Design 2015. “Fifty years ago the Scandinavian Report looked at what Ireland needed to do in terms of promoting itself as a creative hub. It recommended that we have a National Design Centre, National Design Council and a Year of Design – that was in the early 1960s.”

So 2015 it is. The programme is broad and adopts an inclusive look at design; from architecture, engineering and industrial design through to fashion, furniture and interiors. It will also include modern design concepts such as gaming and ICT design, service design, web and interaction design.

“We want people to understand how important design is from the importance of our craft traditions all the way through to our high-tech sector,” says Alex.

The national programme is a series of events across the country to showcase and promote Irish design. “There is amazing regional spread – we’re going to have

activities all over the island and globally.

We’re bringing over a number of shows from our international partners such as the V&A, the Design Museum and Vitra Design Museum in Germany,” says Alex.

“That’s matched by an international programme, which will really give Irish designers an international showcase.

We’ll be attending Maison&Objet in Paris, London Fashion Week, Milan Design Week, New York by Design, the London Festival of Architecture, Paris Fashion Week, Chicago Architecture Biennial, plus events in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. We’ve just air-freighted a show over to Beijing. We couldn’t do this and

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DESIGN

The Lyric Theatre Belfast

by O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects. Photograph: Christopher Heaney.

Hanging Form by Lennon Courtney.

Photograph: Rich Gilligan.

LEFT: Eating objects

by Design Goat. Image courtesy of Design Goat RIGHT: French horn by György Kőrössy.

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DESIGN

Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre by Heneghan Peng Architects. Photograph: Christopher Heaney.

we wouldn’t have been accepted into these international events if we didn’t have the quality of work that we do.”

ID2015 will also include educational and training initiatives in schools and third-level institutions, as well as a programme to develop radical design-led solutions for urban and social issues. It’s designed to inspire change.

“The biggest change will be that the general public will hopefully really understand the benefits of good design,” says Alex.

“It’s also about realising that there is real quality here. We’re very good at promoting certain aspects of Irish creativity, be that literature or music, but design and the creative arts aren’t promoted as heavily. We have amazing talent here: look in fashion at Simone Rocha and JW Anderson; in architecture O’Donnnell + Tuomey are just about to win the Royal Gold Medal – that’s as prestigious as it gets; look at the success of Joseph Walsh. We have the talent, we’ve just got to be better at shining.”

Divider Chair by Tierney Haines.

Boyne Valley Currach by Meitheal Mara. Photograph: György Kőrössy.

Titanic Belfast by Eric Kuhne and Associates with Todd Architects.

Photograph: Christopher Heaney.

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OCEANBLU OCEANBLU 100% Irish Seaweed Meal a rich blend of essential nutrients

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OCEANBLU ✱ Contains a wide range of Vitamins Including vitamins B (B1, B2, B5, B9, B12) and E (Tocopherol). ✱ High in Minerals essential for healthy growth 100% Irish Seaweed Meal and development a rich blend of essential nutrients Micro and Macro minerals including: Calcium, Magnesium, A natural source of vital vitamins & minerals Potassium, Phosphorus, Iodine, Iron, Zinc, Manganese, Selenium, which contains beneficial sugars to support the Cobalt, Boron and Copper. healthy growth and development of animals. ✱ High in Dietary •Fibres Contains a wide range of Vitamins Including vitamins B (B1, B2, B5, B9, B12) and E (Tocopherol).

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Our unique seaweed processing technique has beenThe designed to ensure AlgaeFeed all the valuable nutrients found naturally within seaweed. seaweed is retains all the valuable nutrients found naturally within seaweed. hand-harvested in accordance with a traditional and sustainable method The seaweed is hand-harvested in accordance with a traditional and sustainable method that has been used for centuries along the Atlantic coastline of Ireland. that has been used for centuries along the Atlantic coastline of Ireland.

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DESIGN

Japanese Lady by Una Burke in collaboration with the Irish Handmade Glass Company.

Photograph: Claire Pepper.

SS14 collection by Simone Rocha and Success necklace

by Melissa Curry.

Photograph Rich Gilligan.

With thanks to Irish Tatler.

Football boot by György Kőrössy.

Don’t Miss IN THE MAKING AT DUBLIN CASTLE The opening event focuses on the creativity of the production process, featuring objects mid-manufacturing.

HERE/NOW The flagship exhibition will explore Irish design, charting its creative development from key icons such as Eileen Gray, through Kilkenny, to today.

APPETITE FOR DESIGN A new exhibition looks at food and our experience of it from produce to product. It features the work of designers, architects, cooks and restaurateurs.

THE FUTURE IS HERE From the Design Museum in London, the exhibition examines the evolving design process in an era of 3D printing and digital fabrication.

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Untitled-2 1

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

SCR’s pioneering systems maximise herd performance, improve efficiency and boost business, helping to ensure a secure and prosperous future for farmers and their families.

WITH THE SUCCESS OF ALL DAIRY and beef farms highly dependent on the health and productivity of individual cows, it is essential to make every cow count. And this is the mantra behind SCR – one of the leading providers of herd management and monitoring systems in the UK, Ireland and beyond. Committed to making every individual cow count, SCR monitors millions of cows worldwide, with data-driven solutions such as its Heatime® system which are trusted by small and large farms alike.

Building on over 35 years of meaningful innovation, SCR’s pioneering systems maximise herd performance, improve efficiency and boost business, helping to ensure a secure and prosperous future for farmers and their families.

SCR HEATIME® SYSTEM Providing insights and analytics that are essential for optimising the productivity of every cow, SCR’s Heatime® system enables smarter, more sustainable farming through leadership in cow intelligence.

The advanced cow monitoring solution collects and analyses critical data on every individual cow, delivering the heat, health and nutrition insights that farmers need, when they need them.

HOW CAN SCR SOLUTIONS WORK FOR ME? With access to such valuable and in-depth data, farmers are able to gain higher pregnancy rates, improved lactation curves and lower losses, which all work together to boost a farm’s profitability. Naturally, increased reproduction, milk productivity, and labour efficiencies contribute to a fast pay-off, ensuring SCR systems – including Heatime® – provide a faster return on investment than many realise. In some cases, farmers regain their investment almost

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SCR IN THE UK AND IRELAND Over the past few years, SCR has gained a strong foothold in the UK and Ireland, with more than 2,500 farm systems installed and thousands of cows being monitored. This adoption of SCR technology is in line with global trends, with over three million cows on tens of thousands of farms monitored by the company’s products and systems worldwide.

SCR. Make every cow count.

With access to such valuable and in-depth data, farmers are able to gain higher pregnancy rates, improved lactation curves and lower losses, which all work together to boost a farm’s profitability.

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BUSINESS NEWS

Tempting YOUR

Tastebuds Delicious new flavoured butters from Connacht Gold Tempt your taste buds with Connacht Gold’s new flavoured butters, including butter with sea salt and a cracked pepper butter. Connacht Gold butter with sea salt is rich gourmet butter with added sea salt crystals for increased flavour and crunch.

It is suitable for baking and cooking – perfect for adding mouth-watering flavour to soups, vegetables, fish, meat and potatoes or just spread on a crusty loaf.

The second of Connacht Gold’s new offerings is Connacht Gold cracked black pepper butter. This product will accompany the existing, award winning Connacht Gold garlic and herb butter in the dairy cabinet in the same 100g stick format, expanding its flavoured butter range. This butter is perfect with meat, fish, vegetables or pasta for a delicious flavour.

On the shores of Lough Gill and only minutes from Sligo town, St. Angela’s College, Sligo offers a wide range of undergraduate degree programmes. A college of NUI Galway, St. Angela’s College programmes are accredited by the University, offering the only university-level education in the region.

The academic department of Home Economics offers two programmes in the areas of Food Science and Business. The Diploma of Applied Science in Food and Business Management (Level 7, two year Diploma) and the Bachelor of Applied Science in Food and Business Management (Level 8, four year Honours Degree).

“Our Food and Business Management programmes combine practical food-science elements with business modules, enabling our students to seek employment in food production, new product development, quality control, supervision/management rolls or indeed setting up their own food business.” explains Ronan McArt, Joint Co-ordinator of the B.Appl.Sc. programme. “We also have the expertise of the Food Technology Centre on campus which allows our students to gain

Stepping STONE TO

Success

the valuable knowledge required for consultancy, training and research in their chosen field.”

Ronan also highlights the 20 week work placement available in year three of the B.Appl.Sc. Programme, with the opportunity for networking which in the past has led to employment for students. The college also offers programmes in Textiles, Fashion and Design with Business Management, Health and Disability Studies, nursing degrees as well as being the sole provider of Home Economics teacher education in Ireland.

For more information on the programmes offered by St. Angela’s College, Sligo contact Seán Kelly on 071 9135658 or schoolsinfo@ stangelas.nuigalway.ie or visit www. stangelas.nuigalway.ie

Study food science and business in the northwest!

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

Tempting YOUR

Tastebuds Delicious new flavoured butters from Connacht Gold Tempt your taste buds with Connacht Gold’s new flavoured butters, including butter with sea salt and a cracked pepper butter. Connacht Gold butter with sea salt is rich gourmet butter with added sea salt crystals for increased flavour and crunch.

It is suitable for baking and cooking – perfect for adding mouth-watering flavour to soups, vegetables, fish, meat and potatoes or just spread on a crusty loaf.

The second of Connacht Gold’s new offerings is Connacht Gold cracked black pepper butter. This product will accompany the existing, award winning Connacht Gold garlic and herb butter in the dairy cabinet in the same 100g stick format, expanding its flavoured butter range. This butter is perfect with meat, fish, vegetables or pasta for a delicious flavour.

On the shores of Lough Gill and only minutes from Sligo town, St. Angela’s College, Sligo offers a wide range of undergraduate degree programmes. A college of NUI Galway, St. Angela’s College programmes are accredited by the University, offering the only university-level education in the region.

The academic department of Home Economics offers two programmes in the areas of Food Science and Business. The Diploma of Applied Science in Food and Business Management (Level 7, two year Diploma) and the Bachelor of Applied Science in Food and Business Management (Level 8, four year Honours Degree).

“Our Food and Business Management programmes combine practical food-science elements with business modules, enabling our students to seek employment in food production, new product development, quality control, supervision/management rolls or indeed setting up their own food business.” explains Ronan McArt, Joint Co-ordinator of the B.Appl.Sc. programme. “We also have the expertise of the Food Technology Centre on campus which allows our students to gain

Stepping STONE TO

Success

the valuable knowledge required for consultancy, training and research in their chosen field.”

Ronan also highlights the 20 week work placement available in year three of the B.Appl.Sc. Programme, with the opportunity for networking which in the past has led to employment for students. The college also offers programmes in Textiles, Fashion and Design with Business Management, Health and Disability Studies, nursing degrees as well as being the sole provider of Home Economics teacher education in Ireland.

For more information on the programmes offered by St. Angela’s College, Sligo contact Seán Kelly on 071 9135658 or schoolsinfo@ stangelas.nuigalway.ie or visit www. stangelas.nuigalway.ie

Study food science and business in the northwest!

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SPORT

GAME

OVER

PHOTO: IZABELA SZCZUTKOWSKA

Photographer Kenneth Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Halloran has completed an extensive and melancholic project: documenting some of the hundreds of abandoned handball alleys dotted around Ireland. He tells Ear To The Ground about his work.

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SPORT

I

became interested in the project after discovering a map highlighting the remaining ‘big’ alleys in Ireland. The typology of these structures has evolved over 250 years, with many interim versions and sub-typologies. They are a familiar sight around the country, situated outside small towns and villages, crossroads, and even in the middle of fields. Over 800 sites have officially been identified in a study carried out by Irish architect Áine Ryan.

I began the project as part of an MFA in photography at the University of Ulster at the beginning of 2013.

These are relics of a once vibrant chapter of Irish life. These plain walls were once the thriving open-air theatres of their day.

They were familiar meeting points, where people played games long into summer evenings, and others gathered for simple companionship and discourse. The alleys came alive at a time in Ireland when human interaction needed little in the way of sophisticated props or accompaniments.

In rural Ireland in particular, handball captured the public imagination and societies grew around the games and the alleys that staged them. They became prized places of refuge, offering an escape from ordinary hard-working lives.

At the ball alleys, some strategically placed at crossroads in the open countryside, generations happily fraternised. Some were drawn by the magic and noise of a game which has deep Irish roots. But the alley was more than a sporting venue: it became a vital anchor for the community and an invaluable leisure outlet. It also served as an unofficial meeting point for lovers and revolutionaries – even as a location for executions.

It had an open charter; multiple, indiscriminate possibilities. Some alleys survive – a portion of them intact, and a minority enjoying new leases of life. But the majority are disappearing slowly from the landscape to the point where they will eventually become extinct. Many have been merged and camouflaged into other structures, like farmyard sheds or car parks, so that they are barely recognisable or indentifiable. Many others are simply abandoned and overgrown.

Old handball players and the game’s scattered afficionados will recall their last

LEFT: Shrule, Co Mayo

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SPORT

CLOCKWISE AT TOP: Drumone, Co Meath; Shrule, Co Mayo; Charlestown, Co Mayo; Neale, Co Mayo. RIGHT: Drumree, Co Meath.

ABOVE: Athenry, Co Galway

hurrah 50-odd years ago or more, after they had thrived across the country for over a century before television and better transport began to signal their decline and offer alternative means of entertainment and social collusion.

I visited over 120 sites all over the country and photographed around 60 using a 4x5 Linhoff camera. I began the project in my home county, Clare, and using research from different sources

travelled to 30 of the 32 counties of Ireland in search of the alleys.

I set out to photograph as many variations in shape and design as I could possibly find. Some have three walls, others four, with and without viewing stands.

Some showed variations in structure and style which may be put down to anything from regional influence â&#x20AC;&#x201C; alleys in Roscommon, for instance,

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showed side walls veering outwards in a splayed fashion. Some sit abandoned in isolated parts of the countryside, with little evident sight of human life nearby.

Many are overgrown. Others are sinking into the ground. Another sub-species have been subsumed into some modern practical use, as places for feeding cattle, or an anchor for sheds providing shelter to animals, or a reinforced wall standing sentry around a car park. A great many

others are gone completely, demolished because they were deemed to be of no use or had become a centrepoint for anti-social behaviour or simply a health hazard. I choose overcast days to create an almost melancholic mood.

Is there a value in old handball alleys?

Probably not a great deal. But their legacy is poorly served. They were once an identifiable and deliberate phase in the built environment. They have an

architectural merit and a social, cultural and historical story that needs to be heard and preserved, even if the buildings themselves, or most of them, bow to their inevitable doom. There is no guarantee that that legacy will ever be adequately recognised, but more awareness of the powerful synergy that existed when they stood tall might be an attainable goal.

They had a life once lived, and a life worth reliving through remembrance. â&#x2014;?

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PROVIDING FARM MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FARMFLO has been designed to seamlessly integrate into the everyday running of a farm by allowing information to be captured in the field, barn or tractor as the events happen. This saves the farmer significant time each and every week on paperwork and gives them peace of mind knowing compliance and information provision requirements are up to date.

Farmflo was founded in 2012 by brothers Jason and Gareth Devenney after farmer Gareth was having problems keeping on top of his compliance paperwork.

Jason, a software developer, created a simple application to help Gareth collect the information on the farm. Gareth’s friend and neighbour saw the benefit of the application and Farmflo was born. As they began to use it they continued to improve and develop the application. “As government and EU regulations intensify, we wanted to find some software that could handle some of the reports and paperwork for us. There simply wasn’t anything like it out there, so we built it ourselves.

The great thing about our software is that it is developed from feedback from farmers and is used on our own farm before we roll out any new features,” says Gareth Devenney, Co-founder of Farmflo.

Since its public launch in June 2014, large numbers of farmers across the UK and Ireland have signed up to use the product. “Compliance is one of the biggest worries for farmers and our product provides an easy to use solution that eliminates worry and enables farmers to focus on what they enjoy most. Having conducted extensive development and testing over the past two years, we know our software makes compliance easier for farmers, saving an average of 20 hours administrative time per month” says CEO Jason Devenney.

Farmflo have recently launched their herd management feature, an ideal continuation from their tillage application in the battle to make compliance of agriculture paperwork easier for farmers.

“Our herd management application has been designed by livestock farmers under the guidance of Richard Fairman, a dairy farmer who runs our livestock division. It amalgamates all the features you expect from herd management software and integrates into our crops application for grassland management,” Gareth explains.

This exciting application allows farmers to track and record births, death and movements linked to the Department of Agriculture, feed, weighing, field management, alert system, animal treatments and withdrawal periods. Farmers can view detailed records and histories on their entire

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herd down to the individual animal. This enables farmers to run reports on animal gross margin, cost of feed per animal per day and treatment reports.

Farmflo have also developed a mobile version called Farmflo Touch, allowing farmers to enter information offline without internet or 3G connection into their tablet or smartphone device. This information then automatically syncs when they have connection thus eliminating much of the paperwork that farmers or family members are currently doing in the evenings. Compliance reports can then be generated as required. The app is available from the Apple App Store and the Google Play store.

Farmflo have located their headquarters in Donegal and is growing from strength to strength. “Our software has been created by farmers for farmers so it feels right that we established ourselves in

Donegal in the heart of the farming community. Our goal is to build a world class farming compliance software company right here in Ireland securing sustainable jobs in the community as the company develops,” says Jason Devenney.

This year Farmflo was named Best Agriculture Software Start-up at the Innovation Awards at a ceremony at the National Ploughing Championships 2014 in Ratheniska, Co. Laois. The award recognises and rewards Irish start ups for their successful agriculture businesses.

If you are a farmer and are worried about compliance you can try Farmflo’s software for free for the first month by signing up through our website www. farmflo.com. Farmflo also has a customer support team based in their Letterkenny office and they will be delighted to help you get your farm up and running on the system.

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11/12/2014 12:59

GIFT GUIDE

for THE

Family Give your loved ones something special this Christmas. Take the stress out of choosing with this selection of the best in men’s, homeware and women’s accessories guaranteed to put a smile on anyone’s face – and there’s something to suit all budgets. Stylist: Rachel Murray. Photography: Colm McDermott.

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GIFT GUIDE

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GIFTS FOR HIM Dark green twist knit jumper, €43, River Island 2 Handmade Soap Company shaving set, €49.95, Kilkenny Group 3 Rockport slip-on fleece slippers, €60, McElhinneys Department Store 4 Twist cable knit crew neck jumper, €47, River Island 5 Designer black double swing tab wallet, €44, Debenhams 6 Classic belt in black leather, €65, Ted Baker 7 Green knitted silk tie in polka dot, €79, Louis Copeland 8 Dark red longer length jumper, €47, River Island 9 Babette Waserman cufflinks, €85, Louis Copeland 10 Duchamp cufflinks with inset multicoloured square pattern, €75, Louis Copeland 11 Designer brown leather organiser, €59, Debenhams 12 GUESS mens watch with blue print face & brown leather strap, €219, McElhinneys Department Store13 Red knitted silk tie in polka dot, €79, Louis Copeland 14 Pure cotton slim-fit spot print shirt, €27, Marks & Spencer 15 Leather lace-up formal shoes, €60, River Island 16 Neppy cable knit beanie hat, €16, River Island 17 Alexander cufflinks by Alice Made This, €105, Makers & Brothers 18 John Rocha cufflink box in gift box, €25.02, Debenhams 19 The Savoy Cocktail Book, €19, Makers & Brothers 20 Striped scarf, €69, Hugo Boss

1

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GIFTS FOR SIS 11

1 Archive soaps gift pack, €16.50, Avoca 2 The Happiness Code, €9.95, Kilkenny Group 3 Handmade soap company travel set, €14.95, Kilkenny Group 4 Red Herring fluffy snood, €21, Debenhams 5 Maroon bird print shots B by Ted Baker, €23; Maroon bird print B by Ted Baker, €26, both by Debenhams 6 Fair Isle super soft fleece onesie, €42, Marks & Spencer 7 Red Herring fluffy beanie, €15, Debenhams 8 Prairie scarf amber, €39.95, Avoca 9 Red Herring glove, €19, Debenhams 10 Dublin bag pink, €64.95, Avoca 11 Snowflake print mule slippers, €9.50, Marks & Spencer

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Oriel Food Group is a coming-together of fine food producers from the ancient lands of Oriel, an area that nowadays encompasses all of Co. Louth and extends somewhat into its neighbouring counties. The group is made up of expert individuals and businesses from the north-east of Ireland who share a drive to produce the finest foods using only the best ingredients, techniques and processes. Members of the group have been celebrated nationally and internationally, having won the highest accolades for the quality, taste and integrity of the food they produce.

Oriel Food Group represents the finest food producers from this ancient region. Every member is committed to exceptionally high standards and takes great pride in the wholesome, delicious and natural foods presented by the Oriel Food Group.

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LANNLÉIRE HONEY

TERMONFECKIN POTATOES

THE OYSTERCATCHER

Contact: Anita Thomas, Group Co-ordinator c/o Glydefarm Produce, Mansfieldstown, Castlebellingham, Co Louth.

Email: info@orielfoodgroup.ie • Website: www.orielfoodgroup.ie • Phone: +353 42 937 2343

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GIFT GUIDE

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GIFTS FOR HER

1

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Fluffy cross body bag, €40, River Island 2 Tara Kurt Geiger bag, €56, Arnotts 3 Isabella tote, €390, Milly 4 Carnelian Rhapsody Necklace, €300, Stonechat 5 Gabriella Kurt Geiger, €107.81, Arnotts 6 Cierra round tassel-zip crossbody clutch, €136, Arnotts 7 Alba, €95, Kurt Geiger 8 Boutique high heel metallic snake shoe, €34.95, McElhinneys Departmart Store 9 Reversible pendant necklace, €13, River Island 10 Suuzi purse, €110, Ted Baker 11 Boutique ruched crystal ball clasp clutch bag, €19.95, McElhinneys Department Store 12 Gold lamé hair bow, €6, River Island EAR TO THE GROUND 201

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GIFTS FOR THE HOUSE 7

1 Diamante silver frame, €15, Dunnes Stores 2 Carolyn Donnelly Eclectic reed diffuser, €12, Dunnes Stores 3 Carolyn Donnelly table mat, €4, Dunnes Stores 4 Waterford Crystal marquis wine glass set of four, €37.50, Kilkenny Group 5 Avoca Café Cookbook Gift Pack, €45, Avoca 6 Stone cheese board, €135, Makers & Brothers 7 Carolyn

8

Donnelly Eclectic fluffy hot water bottle, €12, Dunnes Stores 8 Mohair loop throw by Mourne Textiles, €305, Makers & Brothers 9 Carolyn Donnelly Eclectic character bookend, €35, Dunnes Stores 10 Pink notepad, €6, Dunnes Stores 11 Archival Wild Lavender & Crunch of Herbs Candle, €18.95, Avoca salt and pepper set, stylist’s own

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Number One

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03/12/2014 11:26

09/12/2014 14:37

MOTORING

Game THE

CHANGER?

KEY FEATURES

CO2:

Zero CO2 emissions in EV Mode

Will Mitsubishi’s hybrid Outlander PHEV revolutionise the off-road market? Conor Forrest takes a closer look.

EV RANGE: 52km drive range in EV Mode TOTAL RANGE: 824km (official) ECONOMY: 1.9l/100km (combined) ROAD TAX: €170 annual road tax (band A1) POWER:

Total bhp (engine + two electric motors) – 200

0-100KM/H: 11 seconds

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W

e live in an age of motoring evolution, watching as history unfolds before our very eyes.

Hybrid and electric vehicles were once the butt of many motoring columnists’ jokes. In a way it’s an ironic viewpoint, considering that electric cars have been around almost as long as their counterparts that rely on miniature explosions for propulsion. With the Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, BMW’s i range and quite a few more, however, there’s quite the range of options these days.

The above vehicles have one thing in common – they’re all road cars, designed for smooth tarmac. And if you want to occasionally delve deeper off road, via battery power? The options are limited.

There’s Toyota’s RAV 4 EV, but that’s only sold in California. Porsche, meanwhile, have launched a hybrid Cayenne, not your everyday EV. You could always try to manoeuvre a BMW i3 around a muddy track, but you’re not likely to get very far.

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is another story, however.

Three drive modes are available in the PHEV. Electric mode uses electric power only to drive the wheels via the motor, with no fuel consumption or emissions.

Series hybrid mode features a mixture of electric power with assistance from the 2.0l 119bhp engine. And in parallel hybrid mode, the engine provides the power, with the motor providing an additional boost when needed.

If it seems like it’s all getting a little complicated, don’t worry – the car takes care of this for you, with very little to indicate that it’s switching between these modes save for a handy colourful diagram on the driver’s instrument cluster. You can also choose to hold the battery’s charge, ideal if you’re on the way into an urban envi-

MOTORING

CLOSE UP TECH The central panel is well laid out, and features climate control, media centre and the Eco mode option.

TRANSMISSION Comfortable driving is aided by the easily managed automatic gearbox.

TRIM Basic yet quite comfortable – and durable. Leather seats are an optional extra.

ronment. The hybrid aspect works best for these short journeys – driving around Dublin city we used no fuel at all, and regenerative braking helps to recharge the battery.

A full charge at home will take around 4.5 hours, while a quick charge at any of the charging facilities dotted around the country will give you 80 per cent capacity in just 30 minutes. There’s also a third method that uses the engine to charge the battery – 80 per cent capacity in 40 minutes. Mitsubishi also provide an app for new owners allowing for smartphone communication between car and phone – adjusting climate control and the charging times.

DRIVING It’s relatively comfortable on all surfaces, though on the rougher roads you’ll feel vibration through the steering wheel – unsurprising when you consider its relatively low profile. It steers quite well for a big car (a little heavy at lower speeds) and there’s acres of grip. Braking is strong and forceful. What we were really interested in, however, is how it would fare in the rough, considering it’s marketed as a hybrid EV that can jump off road. For forays into grassland and some relatively muddy patches of ground, the Outlander’s 4WD system does its job well. Just be careful when taking it into deep mud, however – a low profile and road tyres mean it won’t be too long before you’re calling for help.

It isn’t designed for places a Toyota Landcruiser would eagerly dive into, but for

POWER The traditional rev counter is replaced by a gauge displaying efficiency levels from Charge to Eco and Power.

DISPLAY The instrument cluster relays petrol, battery and regenerative braking levels, range and more.

wet grass and dodgy country roads it’s an ideal tool.

We do have a few quibbles, however.

The media centre is a little cluttered, and could do with fewer options with which to distract the eye. And, for the price, the trim isn’t quite worth it – there’s a relatively basic feel to it.

The PHEV is probably at its most attractive as a commercial vehicle, or as part of a fleet. Besides the reduced fuel costs and emissions, companies can write off the purchase against their profit levels when buying “qualifying energy efficient equipment.” Having said that, it works quite well as a family car too – plenty of space front and back, with a large boot.

The Outlander PHEV comes in two styles – Instense+ and Instyle, which retail at e41,950 and e47,450 respectively. Out of all the options, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV – named Large SUV of the Year at the recent Association of Professional Motoring Press (APMP) Car and Van of the Year Awards – is probably the best hybrid option for Irish roads. It’s rugged and pleasant to drive regardless of the weather, well able for Ireland’s mixture of (relatively) smooth surfaced motorways and the more uneven national and Broads. Range anxiety is eliminated by injourney charging and a petrol engine that provides diesel fuel consumption levels, and only e2,000 more than the regular diesel equivalent.

Is it a game changer? Hard to say just yet. But one thing’s for sure – it’s got a firm grip on the game.

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Polytunnels for Farm and Garden

Visit our website or display area www.polydome.ie Tel: 057 912 0424 Polydome, Crinkill House, Birr, County Offaly 230084_Polydome_JR_1C.indd 1 Untitled-16 1

06/06/2014 14:57:21 11/12/2014 17:42

MOTORING

THE ORIGINAL, RE-IMAGINED Conor Forrest drives the new Jeep Cherokee.

LOOKING AT THE NEW JEEP CHEROKEE, you sense a coming together of past and present. The iconic front grille is still there but has been pulled over the bonnet somewhat, the boxier shape and simple headlamps replaced by flowing curves and aggressive daytime running lights.

Stitched into the leather steering wheel, which features voice activation control, is the phrase ‘Since 1941’. It’s likely to be a divisive overhaul in the looks department, but you really need to see it in the flesh before you make up your mind.

Our test version was the Limited 2.0l turbo diesel with FWD and 138hp, married to a six-speed manual gearbox. You can also get 4x4 versions of the Cherokee with either 140hp (six-speed) or 170hp (nine-speed auto). Once you get behind the wheel, you’ll quickly realise that it’s a car built for comfort rather than performance. Max speed is 187km/h, 0-100 takes 10.9 seconds (which, to be honest, feels a little sluggish).

Annual road tax is e280, given CO2 emissions of 139g/km, and we averaged a combined 6.5l/100km (43mpg). It’s a little jumpy on the road at low speeds, particularly when moving off in first gear, but independent front and rear suspensions result in a smoother ride and decent handling when you get moving, and the Cherokee feels comfortably planted on the road. Though it seems quite large from the inside, it’s got a turning circle of 11m and is surprisingly manoeuvrable in tight spaces.

Equipment levels are one of the Cherokee’s strongest aspects. The basic Longitude trim level offers some fancy gear including a touchscreen media centre, rear park assist and LED daytime running lights. The next step up is Limited, which adds a bigger media centre, rain-sensitive wipers, keyless entry, privacy glass, automatic headlights, heated and cooled seats and quite a bit more. A colour screen located in the instrument cluster provides a list of useful information including vehicle info, fuel economy and a programmable speed warning. There’s even an actual spare wheel under the boot’s floor, which was something of a surprise.

PLENTY OF ROOM The Cherokee obviously has the family in mind. There’s plenty of storage space spread across the cabin. You can fit a laptop or tablet in the glovebox, and there’s even a hidden compartment beneath the front passenger seat, although the little cubbyhole on the dashboard seems a little pointless. Connectivity won’t be an issue either, with USB, AUX and SD card connections, and 12v sockets in the rear.

It’s quite roomy too. There’s plenty of headroom front and back, and four adults comfortably fit inside the cabin.

The boot measures 591l and can be extended to 714 by pushing the rear seats forward. With the seats folded flat, you’ll find yourself with 1,267l of room – surely enough to carry anything short of a few cattle, and the boot can be opened re-

THE STATS ENGINE:

2.0l turbo diesel

OUTPUT:

138bhp (2.0 4x4. Auto: 170bhp)

0-62:

10.9 (4x2)

TOP SPEED: 187kph COST:

€36,000 (Longitude 4x2) €50,900 (Limited Auto)

EMISSIONS: 139 (4x2); €280 annual

154 (4x4 Auto); €390 annual

motely for those days when it’s absolutely lashing. It’s also one of the safest vehicles to drive on the road. With more than 70 safety features including forward collision warning with crash mitigation (which uses radar to help avoid or limit the impact of a crash), park assist and a reversing camera, the Cherokee was awarded five stars

by EuroNCAP. Price for the Cherokee start from e36,000 for the Longtitude 2.0l 4x2 model, and rise to e50,900 for the 170hp automatic 4x4 version with several options in between. Given the choice, we’d opt for the latter. The extra Limited toys are nice, and then there’s the increased power and offroad capabilities – where the Jeep was originally born to roam. ● EAR TO THE GROUND 207

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VINTAGE MACHINERY

ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S A

Record!

A bright and sunny Donegal day, and no surprise to see a tractor out in the field. But 726 of them? It must be a Guinness Book of Records attempt. The White Cross Vintage Show in Burt was the venue as Ferguson enthusiasts from as far afield as the Netherlands gathered. All driving various pre-1984 Fergusons, and all with an implement attached to work the soil, those involved smashed the record and went down in history.

They also set records for the most Massey Ferguson 135s to work the same field, and the most vintage tractors to form a Massey Ferguson logo. Their success was broadcast on diaspora channel Irish TV.

An Irish Genius: turn to page 45 for the story of Co Down inventor Harry Ferguson, and the efforts of enthusiasts who commemorate him.

PAGE

45

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