Padraig O’Farrell completed a level eight degree in agriculture and returned home to farm. He entered in to a dairy farm partnership with his father in 2015 on the family farm and they milk 80 cows.

“My father wanted to see someone coming home to do it, he wanted help and a bit of direction. It was kind of expected I would be the farmer but we weren’t told that. I was the only one that really had an interest.

“I learned most of what I know now doing work experience. People shout about going to New Zealand, but if you have a farmer five or10 minutes down the road doing it right, most of the time they are more than happy to have someone give them a hand.

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“I suppose it [succession] was just a steady progression all the time at home. It’s a tough subject. I was at a meeting one night and there was a handout on farm succession. If you got a leaflet like that and just put it on the kitchen table, eventually the conversation might come up.

The young person has to get some sort of responsibility to give them more interest to keep them going

“When I came home, I started making breeding and grass decisions. We were some of the first partnerships put through Teagasc, it’s probably more streamlined now. Having a good financial adviser is the main thing.

“The young person has to get some sort of responsibility to give them more interest to keep them going.

“Working with my father, there’s lots of rows and lots of giving out [on both sides]. It took us a good while to adjust. When I came home from college I had every idea under the sun, my father had good knowledge of the ground already. He’d say: ‘It can’t happen, you’ll wreck the place’. You might back off from each other for a few hours a day but you’ll get chatting again eventually anyway.

“A young lad coming home farming has to get away for a while and see other farms. They have to go and run somewhere else or work for someone else for two or three years. At the end of the day it’s a short time – if not you’ll be stuck in a rut at home.”