Growing up on her family’s dairy farm outside Tullamore in Co Offaly, Aisling Neville knew she’d end up with a career in agriculture, one way or another. “I’m the youngest of five children, and we all got roped into helping out on the farm at a young age,” she says. “We were all doing it together, as a family. You take it for granted now, the amount of time we spent together.”
Her love of farming led her to study agricultural science in university, and the course provided the opportunity to travel to Australia. “Shane, my now-husband, and I went to Australia and did our work placement out there for six months,” she says. “We worked with really good people on two different farms, and it sparked a belief that we’d be able to go farming ourselves.”
The couple had returned to Ireland when fate intervened. “A farm came up for lease about a half an hour from my home place, and I felt it was an opportunity,” Aisling says. “We chased that down and were lucky enough to take it on a lease. We’ve been there ever since, and it’s been going well since then too.”
Aisling was just 22 years old when she took on the farm in Moate, Co Westmeath along with responsibility for a 150-cow dairy herd. A bold move for a young woman but Aisling says she’s always been fearless. “Because I was the youngest in the family, I’ve always had the attitude of ‘I can do just as good as the rest of them’,” she explains.
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When it came to financing the project, Aisling expected a challenge and so it proved, at first. “The biggest barrier to young people getting into farming is access to finance.
“Initially when I took on the farm, we needed to buy stock, cows for milking, so I reached out to a few banks. I wasn’t entertained by too many because I had no security. I was a bit of a risk, and I had nothing behind me, but AIB was willing to help.”
AIB, with 170 branches in communities across the country, has a dedicated team of regional agri advisors, all from farming backgrounds themselves, who combine financial expertise with an understanding of the sector’s unique opportunities and challenges. The aim? To support the next generation of young farmers like Aisling to invest, innovate, and build resilient, sustainable farm businesses that ultimately lead to more vibrant rural communities.
The bank’s practical approach made all the difference, Aisling explains. “Some people get very fearful of banks, but in my experience AIB are easy to work with,” she says. “They are very people-oriented and they’re not afraid to give you advice on how to go about something in order to get the necessary finance.
“Once I got set up and established, other banks wanted to work with me, but the AIB agri team were willing to put themselves out there from the very beginning. They could see where we wanted to go and they backed us.”
That initial support marked the start of a long-term relationship. As Aisling’s business and personal goals have developed, the AIB agri team has worked with her changing needs. When Aisling and Shane decided to buy a house close to the farm, it made sense to return to AIB to obtain their mortgage, and the bank has also helped the couple buy more land since they first took on the farm.
By pursuing her own path, Aisling is also inspiring a new generation of young female farmers. In all areas of life, visibility is a key factor in helping people realise what’s possible and the opportunities for women in agriculture are increasing all the time, Aisling says. “With technology nowadays, the real hard labour has gone out of farming, so women aren’t at a physical disadvantage anymore,” she explains.
“Farming as a sector is probably ahead of most other sectors in adopting new technology and the work is only going to become easier as time goes on. So, if parents see that there’s a daughter in the house that has an interest in farming, they shouldn’t look past them. That’s the main thing.”
If any daughter, or parent, needs inspiration they need only look to Aisling. Along with running her successful dairy farm, she is the first woman to sit on the board of Lakeland Dairies and is three years into a five-year term. “It was a good opportunity, so I stuck myself in the race and got elected by the people in the area,” she says.
“It can be challenging at times but it’s brilliant, and it’s a different aspect to the business that you wouldn’t see on your own farm. It’s the scale of it and you see where your milk goes, what’s making money and what’s not, and what we have to do for sustainability and all those other parts that are involved.”
Back on her own dairy farm, Aisling says that things are going well. “I’m happy with where we are at the moment,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to run the business we have today with myself, my husband, and some part-time labour. We milk 180 cows and I think if we can keep doing a better job tomorrow than what we’re doing today, that will be progress. Down the line, it would be nice to be able to purchase a farm of our own and grow that end of it. But we won’t put a noose around our necks either.”
She says that she would return to AIB when the time comes to progress the business further. And for those looking to get into the farming industry, or to take their business to the next level, Aisling has a few words of guidance. “My advice would be, don’t be afraid to reach out to the AIB agri team,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what you’re thinking about doing, it’s always worth having the conversation, so just pick up the phone.”
For more information on AIB’s agriculture and farming supports, see aib.ie
