There is growing anger in the midlands that one of its few higher educational resources, the Franciscan College of Agriculture and Horticulture at Multyfarnham, Co Westmeath, may be closed. The privately run college, which has provided agricultural education to a large number of farming families, is one of the centres under threat in a radical reshaping of agricultural education by Teagasc.
A report prepared for the agriculture and food development authority has recommended the closure of a number of centres.
"It appears to us that Teagasc wants to close down the privately run colleges and build up the ones that it runs itself," Multyfarnham lecturer Mr Tom Daly said. "It seems that we are in the firing line, with Warrenstown, Gurteen and Rockwell, and that the courses and expertise built up here over the years are to be lost," he said.
He added that the college currently provided a range of courses in agriculture and horticulture, including a dairy diploma course which is producing highly trained personnel for large specialist dairy farms.
"We service 20 counties, not just the midlands, and this year, despite all the reports of young people turning their backs on farming, we have had a 25 per cent increase in student numbers," he said.
"While the majority of students come from the midlands, many families choose to send their young people here because it is such a central venue. "We are just off the N4 motorway from Dublin to the north-west and only 20 minutes away from the main Dublin/Galway route. This is the most central location in the country." Closure of the college, he said, would deal a crippling blow to the village of Multyfarnham, which derives a great deal of its income from the college.
"There are 87 students currently following courses here, and there are six teachers, four technicians and a number of other support staff here," Mr Daly said.
He added that the college was also one of the most modern of its kind in the system. The courses at the college, he said, received European Social Fund backing, but the parents of the students paid for the rest.
Currently, the college used the 400 acres around the old Franciscan abbey and an outfarm of 200 acres on which the college ran a 100-strong dairy herd and 400 other cattle and sheep.
"We are looking at ways of developing the college into a centre for rural development in the widest possible sense, and this would be logical given our current links with Athlone Institute," Mr Daly said.
Local politicians of all parties had given assurances that the college would not be closed. The most important of these was the commitment by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Mrs O'Rourke, he said.
"She told us that Teagasc could not, on its own, close down the college, and that was a decision which would have to be made by the Government." He said there was growing support from many bodies, including local government, to keep the college open and to put pressure on the board of Teagasc to ignore the closure recommendations contained in the report. A Teagasc spokesman said it had commissioned Mr Kieran Kennedy of the Economic and Social Research Institute to look at agricultural training in the Republic.
The report had recommended that the number of colleges delivering agricultural training be reduced from six. It had stated that the three which could be closed were Multyfarnham, Warrenstown, Co Meath and either Gurteen, Co Tipperary or Rockwell, Co Tipperary.
The spokesman said the report would be discussed in full by the board of Teagasc. The board could decide where it would continue to provide agricultural training and in which centres it would invest the £10 million made available to it by the Government for training.
"No decisions have been made and a series of discussions are ongoing with the various colleges and other interested parties," the spokesman said.
"I am very happy to report that this year, for the first time in five years (when the numbers of young people coming into agricultural training dropped), that the numbers have now stabilised."
He said there were now 600 students taking courses in the remaining colleges.