Mr. Daryl Fahy:

The sawmill industry provides much rural employment. At our plant we have 100 people working full-time inside the gate, with an additional 200-plus employed in harvesting, extraction and haulage. That number would be replicated in the businesses run by my colleagues. We are located in Corr na Móna and one can travel to Clifden some 65 miles away without passing another factory. Luckily, there is a successful McHale farm machinery plant in Ballinrobe but, apart from that, one could travel in a 30-mile radius to Galway without passing another factory giving the kind of employment we do. Most of the workers are from the local community, and this type of rural employment is replicated across the industry. The contractors employed by us would typically come from a fairly close distance to the sawmill. These people work in forestry in rural parts of the country, and they may stay in local bed and breakfasts and support local shops. Their work feeds into the rural communities.

There are spin-off companies from a typical sawmill. We operate in an estate with two other companies. One deals in the sale of timber products and the other utilises bark and residue from our process. It is mulched for garden products, etc., and the company has up to 15 people working on the process. The number of people employed in such spin-off companies exemplifies the multiplier effect, and one can see it in the employment of engineers and maintenance personnel. It is a multiple of the 2,500 people employed by the main industry.

Five years ago construction industry activity fell off a cliff and at that stage our industry exported approximately 15% to 20% of output. We had to react overnight and, in highlighting the resilience of the industry, we managed to turn around those figures in a 12-month period. Our company currently has 80% of output going across to the UK. We achieved this in a two-pronged fashion. We had major capital investment and in our company we invested over €7 million in the past five years, without any subsidy coming from the State. The second element came from workers, and to get to get to the stage where 80% of output was going abroad, our staff had to be very versatile. They pulled out all the stops for whatever time or travel was needed to establish a market in the likes of the UK. I speak for the rest of the sawmills in that regard too.

We process fast growing sitka spruce. We compete in the UK market with Scandinavian and Nordic countries that have a more slowing grow tree. Ours is a slightly superior product. Irish construction timber is now the benchmark for quality and service in the UK. This will be damaged if we cannot maintain the production and supply of our sawmills.