Some 100 Teagasc staff in Dublin are to be relocated to the west and to Co Carlow. However, the future of Mellows College, the State's only training school for organic farming, is still not secure.
The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Mr Ó Cuív, has welcomed the decision by the agriculture and food development authority to deploy staff in two rural locations. The move is being made as part of the authority's decision this week to sell its headquarters in Sandymount, Dublin, as a cost-saving measure.
The authority's budget has been cut by €15 million this year, and the 32 staff at Mellows College in Athenry were told the organic training centre could be closed due to financial stringencies. However, a decision on this has been deferred till next month's authority meeting. The Green Party leader and agriculture and food spokesman, Mr Trevor Sargent, has said that any such closure would cost more money.
"Many conventional farmers face bleak futures unless they can convert to organic methods and secure realistic prices for their produce,"Mr Sargent has said.
Mr Pascal Gillard, certification manager with the Irish Organic Farmers' and Growers' Association, said closure of the college "makes no sense", when the mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy was going to direct more farmers into organic production and rural environmental protection schemes (REPS). The college farm is currently in the middle of its two-year conversion to full organic status.
The Teagasc authority agreed this week that some 30 staff and postgraduates working in its economics and rural development research centre would be relocated to Mellows College. About 70 staff based at the Sandymount head office will be relocated to the Teagasc complex in Oak Park, Carlow, which is currently the National Tillage Research Centre. The decentralisation programme is scheduled to take two years.
Mr Ó Cuív said that the Teagasc board was to be congratulated on its "foresight and genuine commitment to rural Ireland". The work Teagasc did was ideally suited to decentralisation, the Minister said.
"In Dublin terms, 100 staff seems like a relatively small number, easily missed in the hundreds of thousands of workers in our capital city. However, in a rural context, the deployment of 100 staff to Athenry and Carlow will have a huge impact on the economy of these areas," he said.
