Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

During the negotiations on the programme for Government, one of the issues that arose from the Fine Gael side was that party's plan to promulgate a share-holding entity, NewERA, which mirrored what happened in a number of progressive countries, including all of the Scandinavian countries and Britain, to get better value from State assets. I must say it has been a very worthwhile exercise. One of the things we discovered, in the drilling down of the work done by NewERA, is the situation within Coillte, namely, that even with all of the commercial forests which the Deputy has lauded, Coillte has struggled to generate cash from its trading operations to date. A large portion of Coillte's profits and cash flow has come from the sale of land and from exceptional gains on the sale of immature forests. In other words, what Coillte has been involved in is selling not only harvesting rights, but also land, on a piecemeal basis. That has been generating such cash flow and profits as the company has. We must fundamentally restructure that company and must make our decisions rationally and on a commercial basis.

I do not know for certain but I believe that the synergies between Coillte, with its very significant land holdings across the State, and Bord na Móna, which has a great track record but whose core business - the production of turf - is running out, could be harnessed to develop a very important, new State bio-energy company. Our objective between now and the end of the year is to test that thesis commercially to ascertain the benefits, assets, liabilities and requirements to make that a reality. When we have that due diligence or analysis completed, I will return to the House and present the findings to Deputies.

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