Mr. David Gunning:

Thank you Chairman. I will answer that question upfront before I deal with the many questions that have been raised. The understanding is that the work streams I have identified will be substantially complete by the end of this year. That is the timeframe to which the working group is operating. It is in line with the timeframe communicated to us by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, in terms of moving to the next stage. He announced in the Dáil that a transaction would be possible by Q4 of 2013, which is approximately 12 months from now.

I will respond to the questions in the order they were asked. Senator Mary Ann O’Brien inquired about sales teams, margins, products and strategy. We have spent much time in recent years getting into the detail of which products were selling and understanding the margins. We have killed off product lines we discovered were not delivering the types of returns we needed. Our whole thrust is into higher margin-type products. It is difficult to run a commodities manufacturing business in this country. We want to be involved with a value-added type product. In essence, we want to increase the number of value-added products within our portfolio and as other products come to maturity to exit from those. We are trying to get into products. There is a commercial sensitivity because this is a competitive space and we have competitors based in Scotland, Latvia and Latin America. We will not discuss the detail of our products now but in essence we are looking towards a much higher margin-type product mix within the family of Coillte products.

We do not intend to discuss the details of that now but in essence we are looking towards a much higher margin product mix within the family of Coillte products.

On our sales teams, we do not operate aggressive sales incentive type schemes. We pay our people market-based salaries whether they are in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom or Ireland, with some limited incentives to deliver on margin and overall revenue targets. In terms of the challenge, it would be easy to manufacture commodity product and run the factory 24 hours a day, seven days a week but that does not give us the optimal type return. We want our factories running to give us high margin products. Our philosophy is to add value to fibre that comes out of our forest and our responsibility is to add the maximum value we can to do that. That is the area in which we are working.