Mr. Johnny Fox:

In responding to the questions posed by Deputy Heydon, it is important to note so doing may answer many of the questions the joint committee's members collectively have asked. One point coming across is the question of what is the company's future, where is it going, what can it do and what kind of company is it. Consequently, it is important to place on record a number of points. Coillte has been restructured internally four times since 2004, namely, in 2004, 2007, 2009 and most recently, in 2012. The latest restructuring is very interesting because it has broken the link between the pay and staff structures of Coillte as they related to the public service. Its staff structures, promotional structures and pay structures are now linked to the private market. Effectively, it is a company that is forward-looking and not one that is reliant on its past in order to make good business decisions or good decisions on behalf of the State or the citizens of the country. The point in this regard is that it has a flexible staff, which understands that to make this a good company, it must change. This was done four times without a single dispute within the company. It is important to put that on record because effectively, this means that in the first instance, it is a confident company with a confident workforce, whose staff members are not afraid to take commercial decisions or decisions which impose commercial realities on them. Such fear is something for which public service workers often have been criticised.

The second part of my response pertains to the question of where is the future for this company. In common with other commercial semi-State or State companies, Coillte has a role to play in a new area of industry, that is, the biomass and bioenergy sectors. Were Coillte to be sold, it would put back any research or progress in that area, which potentially could help the country to kick-start a recovery and this certainly is where the future of Coillte lies. There is no question about this and I believe the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, mentioned in the Dáil that there is a future for Coillte in this area. This undoubtedly is a new technology that must be developed and we must have Irish companies, not foreign companies, at the heart of it. This is the reason it is so important to keep this company in its current position. Therefore, the status quo is not good enough. I do not mean this to be critical of Coillte, as what I mean is one cannot remain static while the whole world is moving around one. Coillte - I believe the company agree - undoubtedly should be at the heart of developing new technologies in forestry. In addition, there are other areas in which it can make a contribution and can improve. For example, the potential of Coillte's lands in respect of the tourism industry is untapped. It is only touching the surface at present and if it can bring benefits to the economy worth €270 million per year from an untapped resource, what could it bring to the economy were it to be tapped properly? Coillte is also expanding into making available its lands to telecommunications companies to improve the provision of broadband by putting in place infrastructure on them. My responses to the questions from Deputy Heydon answer those of everyone in the room as to exactly how important is Coillte to the economy and what role it can play.

As to whether IMPACT is confident in Coillte in its current form, the answer to that question is both "Yes" and "No". We are confident in Coillte and are confident that its current form will continue to change to meet the necessary requirements to meet the challenges of the future.

We are confident that we can do that. Coillte has restructured itself four times in eight years. No private company would do that. It is remarkable and that needs to be put on the record. We in IMPACT have great confidence in Coillte in its current form and believe that it can play a leading role. That answers many of the questions that committee members have posed.

We can confirm that Coillte is not in disagreement with anything Bacon has said. Coillte is very much in line with that. The only contribution we were asked to make on the Goodbody issue was to bring our views on the Bacon report to that committee but we made no input to the report. That was already done when we were asked to make a submission to the committee that the Government had set up which did not have Goodbody on it. We can confirm that Goodbody worked exclusively with Coillte which supplied commercial information. Nobody else had an input.