Teagasc has started to restructure its advisory service with two regions currently trialing a new system of services to farmers.

Advisers in the Wicklow/Carlow/Wexford advisory regions and in the Donegal/Sligo/Leitrim advisory regions have been involved in the pilot, which started on 1 January 2025.

Teagasc will be assigning some advisers to focus and specialise on supporting scheme services with clients, thus allowing a cohort of advisers to be more focused on technical and farm business development.

The amount and complexity of schemes has greatly increased demands on both farmers and advisers in recent years

These will be known as scheme advisers and enterprise advisers, respectively, while farm advisers will continue to support farmers who rely on schemes for a significant portion of their farm income in addition to the technical service they require.

Letters are being posted to Teagasc clients outlining the changes in the new strategy and their designated adviser.

Differences for clients may arise where, in some cases, the client is referred to another adviser for specialised tasks around schemes.

“The amount and complexity of schemes has greatly increased demands on both farmers and advisers in recent years,” Tom Curran, head of the Teagasc advisory programme, said.

“Our staff have worked very hard to keep up with this workload and this has reduced the time they have for technical on-farm advice.

“We are keen to address the strong feedback from clients highlighting the need and the benefits to being able to retain and strengthen a high-quality technical and farm business advisory support service,” he said. Teagasc plans to roll-out the new advisory system nationally from January 2026.