Teagasc to set up panel for REPS services
A tender process seeking expressions of interest was placed on the e-tenders website last week.
The background to the decision is the 37% reduction of Teagasc staff numbers, more than three times the 12% in the general public service.
As a result, where teachers and business and technology advisers retire, they are replaced by younger advisers who, up to now, were delivering the REPS service.
This has led to sub-contracting work for 10,000 REPS clients, while Teagasc concentrates on its other work with more than 40,000 other fee-paying clients — including 5,000 participants in the Dairy Efficiency Programme, 4,000 in the Beef Technology Adoption Programme, 50,000 applicants for the Single Payment Scheme, 4,000 e-Profit Monitors for clients, nitrate derogations plans, education courses, the Better Farm Beef programme (expanded to 30 farms); work with new entrant farmers; and AEOS and TAMS work.
Teagasc estimates the minimum requirement to support the Food Harvest 2020 plan to boost food exports 42% is 300 advisers. There is now a deficit in all advisory regions between planned workload and available advisers.
According to Dr Tom Kelly, head of knowledge transfer at Teagasc, there is no doubt advisers will have more clients to support. He sees discussion groups and public events keeping advisers challenged by the technical demands of their clients.
The profit monitor needed for dairy efficiency and beef discussion programmes will give farmers and advisers the farm performance data needed to set about improving profitability about as a team.
Dr Kelly defended the overall 5% increase in charges in 2012, the first increase since 2009. He said there is a very low entry rate charge of €155 per client for a club service, with a discount of €55 for small farmer clients with less than 50 income units.
He said 11 advisory clinics have been set up to facilitate areas most affected by 35 office closures; a further five offices are planned for closure this year. “I believe clients will continue to recoup their investment in Teagasc charges several times over.”
Where individual farmers or groups of farmers want to meet advisers, arrangements can be made at locations other than the office, and Teagasc will still provide farm visits to clients.
Teagasc assures farmers that outside contractors delivering REPS support work will be monitored by Teagasc, and the work will be done to the required standards.
Mini-tenders will take place for different packages of REPS related work in different regions of the country.
