Family farms are under threat because of lifestyle choices, the Minister for Agriculture and Food said yesterday at the National Ploughing Championships.
Mr Walsh gave a broad hint at a press conference in Castletownroche that he will look at new ways of assisting families to encourage their young people to continue farming.
He said that he was aware of a number of cases in the past 18 months where young people had refused to take over from their parents.
In some cases the farms had been in the families for generations.
The problem, he said, was not so great on beef or tillage farms where young people had an opportunity to get away during the year.
"It is in the dairy sector that there is a big problem. Young people cannot be expected to put 365 days a year every year into the job," he said.
"What one could do is to make farming more attractive and create a better lifestyle for young farmers. In order to do that we have to look at the ways we are supporting farming."
One way of doing this was by bringing in farm relief workers so that young farmers could get away from the farm on holiday.
However, co-operatives involved in providing farm relief services now had great difficulty finding people to work for them because of the unsocial hours.
Asked if he was speaking about tax breaks or support for the relief services, Mr Walsh, who had said he was anxious to resolve the problem, said that when the nub of the problem had been identified there would be a formula for a solution.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, who visited the event, said much had been done to help farm families but we had to keep supporting family farms.
He said the success of regional policies had added to the problem of labour shortages in all sectors, including farming, but he would like to see more young people going into farming.
The problem was not so much one for today as one for the future.
In other key policy areas, Mr Walsh said the decision on breaking the link between land and the milk quota would be made in a few weeks. He said milk quota would remain in the co-operative areas.
There would be no general distribution of the 32 million extra gallons from the EU: it would go to active milk-producers.
He added that he was currently doing battle with the Department of Finance to ensure that there would be proper national funding for the early retirement, REPS and headage schemes.
Earlier he had announced an advisory committee on the role of women in agriculture which will address education and training, the under-representation of women at political and organisational level, health and welfare, isolation and marginalisation, personal finance and other economic and legal issues.
The committee will be chaired by Ms Ann McGuinness, who is Ireland's first woman county manager, based in Westmeath.
Two of the main farming organisations, Macra na Feirme and the Irish Farmers' Association, focused on women on the farms on the opening day.
Macra na Feirme presented its first policy document on women to Mr Walsh, pointing out the problems women faced in the areas of land inheritance, pensions, support for carers, computer training and farm safety.
The Irish Farmers' Association announced its 1999 Farm Women of the Year Awards.