Conor D McGuinness: Farmer's Yard and ending rural isolation

Minister, I want to ask you about the Farmer's Yard initiative developed here in this country in any case by Dr Shane Conway and Dr Maura Farrell and piloted successfully in Mount Bellew, Mart. I met recently with Dr Shane Conway to discuss the model and it uses Mart's trusted social spaces for older farmers combining peer-to-peer support, information sharing, social contact and discussion around issues such as succession, ageing, isolation and farm life. As we mentioned and discussed earlier, social isolation, particularly in rural Ireland, is reaching crisis levels so this is a really timely initiative and I want to know if you're familiar with the initiative and do you see its potential as part of a rural regeneration and rural enterprise development? Thank you, Deputy McGuinness, thank you for this very important question. You are right, it's actually a very futuristic looking approach by Shane Conway and UCG. I am worthy of the initiative and I know that in the state of Pennsylvania there is that synergy, that relationship and I certainly hope to explore that further and I'll happily talk to you further away from what's happening in this chamber because this is about a social initiative for older farmers and as you know quite well, a farmer doesn't just retire, it's a lifelong love and draw for the land and for farming and for agriculture and government recognises the importance of this scheme but also the wellbeing piece and addressing the whole point of socialisation. You mentioned and I mentioned in Waterford around the great work that's been done by community organisations in combating deprivation and socialisation and I actually believe that this is one thing that we should look at further as a government. I know it's the responsibility of the Minister of Agriculture in the main but I think it's about the farming community working with cross-government in terms of the rural future that Minister Cleary referenced earlier and I'll certainly be happy to converse with you further because if you look at what we're trying to do, it's about keeping people in the land, it's about succession planning, it's about ensuring we have a new regeneration and a new uptaking of farming and I know in Pennsylvania and if you go through the whole piece with them as well, they have a similar conversation being held and taking place that we have. So if you look at the On Firm Ground initiative that provides training for agriculture advisers and service providers, it helps them recognise the importance of health and wellbeing. It works also on the whole piece around the women and men sheds initiatives and we've had this conversation in previous question times around the senior lunch scheme and I think concluding this, it's a conversation we need to have further, maybe the department with the committee could walk further on it as well. That engagement, I suppose the strength of this initiative is it's not asking anybody to go where they wouldn't ordinarily go, it's not asking somebody to go outside their comfort zone, it's meeting people where they're at, where they feel comfortable, where they're turning up to anyway and it's not just about isolation amongst older farmers but it's also about connecting maybe younger farmers, giving people who are still farming but would love to retire a way to find somebody who might take on that enterprise, to share skills that they have learnt up throughout their whole lives. So it's a critically important one, I welcome your engagement, I think it would be good to discuss this and see how we in this state and in this society can support it. DR QUINN I think the Minister has outlined earlier that the whole rural future approach being taken by government is one that we're looking to develop further rural development, taking action to support what we discussed this morning, rural communities and to combat socialisation. But I happily chat to you again, Foyler Deputy, on a further matter on that again.