Minister rejects farm jobs forecast

Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan has rejected a conclusion in a new report that the State will have only 10,000 full-time farmers by 2025.

The report, Rural Ireland 2025 Foresight Perspectives, was drawn up by scientists from NUI Maynooth, University College Dublin and Teagasc.

Launching the report yesterday, Ms Coughlan said that while she accepted much of it, she was happy to be categorical: "I reject that finding". Ms Coughlan said she believed 105,000 commercial farms would remain in 2015 and the industry should "stop getting all hung up" on whether these would represent full-time farms or part-time farms. Pressed as to how many farms she believed would be in place 10 years after 2015, Ms Coughlan declined to say. There was, she said, a balance to be found between full-time farming and income from other sources.

One of the report's authors, Dr Liam Downey, said it represent "an early wake-up call" to the Government on the possibility of foreign manufacturing investment having left Ireland for low wage economies by 2025. But he said this represented a scenario, he did not say it was unavoidable, but that action must be taken now if the scenario was to be avoided.

IFA leader John Dillon said the "baseline projection in the report is for 70,000 to 100,000 full-time equivalent jobs by 2025. The actual out-turn will depend mainly on whether or not commercial farming is profitable and that is why the outcome of the World Trade Organisation talks on agriculture is of vital importance to Ireland."