A Cavan dairy farmer has spoken out about comments made by Michael Fitzmaurice TD who said schoolchildren are "nearly brainwashed" into not taking up farming as a career. The Independent Galway TD was speaking at an Oireachtas Agriculture Committee recently when he said the days of 'young lads running after a new tractor are over' and 'a picture of a cow is nearly a bad thing' in schools today. Thomas Duffy runs a dairy farm with his parents, Kathleen and Ned, at Edenburt near Virginia.
He told the Joe Finnegan Show he knows of "a couple of examples" of head teachers saying they didn't want Agri science teachers in their school because they "see it as a lesser". However, he said the fact remains most rural primary school teachers in Ireland are still from a rural background and although he has "some concerns" about material he has heard about circulated in national schools, he put that down to "just individual teachers".
The former President of Macra Na Feirme and Vice President of the European Council of Young Farmers said, in his opinion, the real reason why young people are not going into farming today is because of issues around access to land and succession. "There is a validity to his point," Thomas Duffy told Northern Sound, "But, the reality is, the reason we're not seeing more young people into the sector doesn't come at primary or secondary level but very much because the actual access to land has become increasingly impossible, succession is increasingly impossible and, ultimately, we're not seeing policy-drivers support young people."
