Michael Fitzmaurice demands answers on farmers' mental health

First of all, thanks for coming in, both people. As I've been outlined earlier, I think the first thing we need to recognise is that seeing somebody now in the daytime is an unusual thing if you're a farmer. You see no one from one end of the day to the other, and they're on their own a lot of the time. So I'm not going to, everyone has to try and get a speak here. I'm going to ask a few straightforward questions, and Alice, say you and other farming organisations would be in with the department for the, say, the Rights Charter. Is part of the Rights Charter, is there a section in it for mental health and well-being? And if not, how is that that was never included for the farmers? And for Chagas, you get a good bit of government funding. Have you a section in Chagas that basically helps or deals with farmers? That have mental health issues? Because we have every, we're looking at genetics of cows, and we're looking at how to make a better calf and do everything. But the person that produces all this food is the person that no one seems to look at. And I'm asking you, what have you done for that? That's my two questions. Thank you. I'm going to... A range of questions there. I'll take them briefly and then hand over to my colleague. Senator Bohan just mentioned about what funding we get. Well, I don't have the exact funding off hands. It's in our annual report, and it's laid before the houses of the Oireachtas, you know, but the funding is there. Now, what our focus on, you know, we have approximately, let's see, I have the number there. We have about 385 advisors in round figures, you know, and the focus of what we're doing there is to maximise the, you know, the contact between farmers and to, you know, to target people towards mental health services. So our role is to focus farmers in the right direction. You know, just the next question regarding the Charter of Rights, you know, it's something I will bring back to our senior management. No, the question is, what service do we have? In our statement, we mentioned on firm ground, we're training up advisors, you know, Department of Health and Department of Agriculture funded to assist farmers. And, you know, we're integrating our service into advisory, you know, work, you know. So that's an issue there. You know, Senator Daly, you know, you made the point about, you know, the hard to reach, you know, about a third of farmers are clients of Chaggish, about a third are clients of the consult, private consultants, and then there's a third that are not in contact with anyone. The firm ground, those consultants are involved in that as well. So we're seeking to maximise the reach. You know, farmers are, you know, self-employed and, you know, they run their own affairs. So we seek to encourage them through communications and through events, you know, to come and talk to us. So we're always trying to increase our numbers. I think Senator Brady mentioned the stress on farmers in particular. So maybe I might just hand over to my colleague on that particular matter. Okay. So I'm going to pick up on a couple of issues here and I'll link one or two statements and questions that were made. So Senator Boylan mentioned the issue of TB as a key stressor and Senator Daly mentioned the, asked the question about how do we access farmers and how to reach farmers outside of the representative organisations in Chagga services. And this is where engaging with others becomes really important. This is where involving vets in training programmes, involving inspectors that are going out from various different organisations, not just Daffam, but a range of organisations and working on farms with farmers to provide them with the skills and enabling them to develop those skills through on-farm ground. In terms then of, there was a question asked about whether or not, Deputy Fister Morris asked the question whether there was a dedicated section within Chagga working in this area. What we've done in Chagga is developed a dedicated research strand within the rural economy programme and I'm the head of the department for the agri-food business and spatial analysis unit. And within that we've a dedicated research section that comprises a number of researchers working on this issue. We collaborate really closely with our advisory colleagues and our education colleagues in order to integrate the services that we're developing into the day-to-day interactions that we have with farmers. And that is really, really important. We don't want to single out people or stigmatise mental health in any way. We want to integrate the supports that we're providing into our day-to-day contacts with farmers. My colleagues will answer some of the questions. I'll take the first one which came from Deputy Fitzmaurice and basically on the farmers' rights charter. I wasn't in on the drawing up of that but I have read it numerous times and whereas I cannot say definitively that there is anything about mental health in it or not in it. I can tell you that it obviously isn't very clear in it because it's not coming to my mind at this point in time and if it was it would be there. Now having said that, a lot of the time when we were trying to draw up the different conditions and terms within that farmers' rights, we looked at, you know, I suppose covertly how the department pay us and the lack of time, the long time it takes to pay us and the stress that that causes on farms and I'm afraid we didn't get much of a reaction on that. It's still 14 days for us to respond but a lot longer for the department to respond. if there's an issue. And my colleague Claire will take the one on funding for Deputy Weyland. Thank you very much. Yes, so just last year we ran, IFA ran a successful farmer health check project as you're all aware and in partnership with Cree and funded by the Department of Agriculture and we thanked the Department of Agriculture for this funding. We received €210,000 to carry out 1,000 health checks for last year's project. We carried out this very successfully. There was a huge uptake from our farmers on the ground and so we went back into the department this year and we've been funded €250,000 for 2,000 health checks. So double the scale of the project this year. So I suppose with our project we committed to doing something different. We wanted to meet the farmers on the ground. We wanted to go to somewhere where they felt comfortable, where they felt that they could engage with us. So I suppose we set up in various marts around the country. This wasn't just for convenience, I suppose it was to meet the farmers there, that they felt comfortable, there was respect, there was trustworthy there amongst us as IFA and Cree as the nurses. So I suppose that's, if we want to continue to reach these vulnerable people or vulnerable farmers in these areas, this is something that we need to consider on a yearly basis. Funding is available to continue this project. We have met these people on the ground. The recommendations and the feedback from the farmers has been exceptionally good. We've had a huge uptake. So I suppose IFA are very proud to have achieved such a successful project last year and we are really looking forward to carrying out this project again in the coming weeks. Theresa Rochus, Chair of our Farm Family, will take the question. Thank you very much. Yes, I think our project has shown and identified, I think one of the most serious and I suppose sectors in our, which is our most vulnerable sector, which is agriculture. I think we have to accept and highlight that there's a, you know, the mental health and the mental health and the wellbeing of our farmers is priority in agriculture. We would say the most vulnerable sector needs are the challenges that farmers face. Our project for the Pharma Health Check Programme highlighted at least 23 red flags that showed the challenges that farmers face each day. And these challenges can be anything from the likes you mentioned earlier, TB, which is disease on farms, domestic issues, lack of succession planning, accidents, you know, illnesses that occur due to farm accidents and fatalities on farms down to wellbeing issues. And I suppose the vulnerable sector are often the most that don't access the services. So with our Farmer Health Check Programme, we wanted to change behaviours and attitudes. If you can change the behaviours and attitudes of farmers and their families, this is open to men and women and their young adults, that people can access this service in the most vulnerable, in the most rural communities and people, we met them, as Claire's mentioned, the most isolated communities, we want to bring the services to them so that they can reach, so we can reach their needs. We're coming to them and we're offering a professional service, a full health check, that people, we're also preventative care, we're all about preventative care, making people aware of their, of their health and their wellbeing and their mental health. And if we can, if we can improve their health and wellbeing and their mental health, they're going to make better decisions on their farm, better financial decisions. They're going to make better, safer decisions on their farm through farm safety. And they're going to also make, I suppose, make a better income overall. Their farmers will be productive in the long term. And I suppose what we want to show that farmers are very, very vulnerable in relation to environmental sectors and, you know, and you can talk about storms and we can talk about different issues on the ground that make us, I think, and I think we have to protect our farming community overall. Thank you. I'll take the next.