Teagasc may have to turn students away from its farming courses if the moratorium on staff recruitment in State bodies is not eased, its director Gerry Boyle has warned.
Prof Boyle said there had been “spectacular” growth in enrolments in agricultural courses, but the State body was facing huge challenges in accommodating these students because of the embargo on staff recruitment.
The number of students enrolling in Teagasc courses has more than doubled since 2006, but the number of teaching staff has remained at the same level. Some 618 students enrolled in Teagasc courses in 2006 compared with 1,506 this year, but the number of teaching staff has remained at between 60 and 73.
“We’re at the limits now, we feel, of how far we can push this because we’ve increased the student-teacher ratio pretty dramatically in our colleges,” Prof Boyle said.
This would lead to “very difficult decisions should the numbers continue to increase”.
He said everything depended on getting approval for exceptional recruitment. “If we don’t get approval for exceptional recruitment and if the intake continues to increase at the rate it has been, well, we are going to have to contemplate capping intake,” he said. “We’ve increased the student-teacher ratio from about 12 in 2006/2007 to nearly 20 now. That isn’t sustainable.”
Crisis point
He said agricultural education was funded by the Department of Agriculture, rather than the Department of Education, so decisions taken to safeguard education from the worst impact of the recruitment embargo did not extend to Teagasc courses.
A “crisis point” was being reached in two agricultural colleges, Clonakilty and Pallaskenry, “and we are working urgently on solutions for that situation”. Prof Boyle said the demand for farming courses might slow down if the economy picked up, “but there’s a great positivity out there for agriculture”. The embargo was also having a serious impact on research as the loss of a key staff member in a particular area of research had long-term implications. Its farm advisory service was “at the pin of its collar” to meet demand.
Teagasc had about 400 farm advisers in 2000, but now only has about 250, while the number of farmer clients has remained at more than 40,000.
Teagasc employed about 1,600 staff between 2001 and 2009, but by 2015 this will have fallen by 36 per cent because of the moratorium. Prof Boyle said that while budgets were always a concern, the staffing issue was "by far the most serious" because of the specialist nature of the organisation. He was speaking at the launch of Teagasc's report for 2012. Teagasc chairman Dr Noel Cawley said the organisation had provided an advisory service to more than 42,600 farmer clients in 2012. It published 334 refereed research publications and 112 technology updates.
