This article is from page 28 of the 2005-08-16 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 28 JPG
speaks to Liam O’Rourke, who is just settling in to his new role as de- velopment officer for farm services in the county.
According to Mr O’Rourke farm serv- ices in Clare, and indeed in Galway, have not been developed over the last number of years. Instead there has been a greater con- centration on providing a contract fencing service in these counties. This is one of the areas where he feels that work can be done.
“My first priority is to develop a pool of FRS operators in County Clare with the possibility of de- veloping a labour pool in Galway at a later stage,” said Mr O’Rourke. “FRS has a very comprehensive operator training package available and I intend to train as many operators and potential operators in Clare.”
Mr O’Rourke has already begun to train a number of inter- ested people in manual handling, relief milking, grassland management, fertiliser spreading, grass management and a two day advanced tractor operations course.
‘“T hope to create an awareness and interest in farm services in Clare again and obviously this will help us to be in a strong
position to provide a broad range of services to farming community,’ he said.
Indeed, a new feature of farming in Ireland today is the demand for qualified farm staff to be contracted from abroad, and the FRS has put a scheme in place to accommodate this trend. Farmers can pay an annual membership fee to join the scheme and for an additional sum can avail of the farmer accident and sickness scheme which pays 75 per cent of the cost of relief while a farmer is incapacitated due to an accident or sickness.
“We have established contacts in countries like Poland, Latvia and Hungary where highly qualified farm staff can be sourced,’ said Mr O’Rourke. “The FRS can give additional in- duction and skills training to these Eastern Eu-
ropean workers while they are placed full time on a farm with no additional cost to the farmer.”
The FRS also hosted a one-day safe tractor driving skills course for 14 – 16 year olds and a one-day pre-silage season machinery safety course earlier this year and a wide range of other courses are now available. The reorganised FRS has four distinct divisions namely: farm services, fencing systems, re- cruitment and training.
There are also a number of full and part-time positions avail- able in FRS at the moment. For more information check out www.irsnetwork.com or call 063 90666.