Mr. Donal Magner:

When Coillte markets its timber, the main activity is the auction on a Thursday. Every sawmill has a button and a monitor as the timber comes through and they all bid for that timber. That is the bulk of it. In the past, however, there was a distribution system. In other words, some mills had an arrangement - not a long-term one - whereby they would not be totally left out. The auction system was agreed at the time. I spent a while with the Irish Timber Council and people there often asked what they could have instead of the auction process. The electronic auction is overseen independently and it actually works. However, there is still overcapacity in the mills which means that too many mills are chasing too few logs. There is no way one can divvy it out, so to speak, for everybody's attention, but there are arrangements. I know there have been arrangements in the past, although I am not too sure of what it is now, whereby mills did not totally suffer. If a region around ECC dried up, for example, they often brought forward sales to facilitate them. It is in Coillte's interest to have a competitive saw-milling sector.