Mr. Daragh Little:

I thank the committee for inviting us before it today. First, I will outline what is the Irish Forest and Forestry Products Association, IFFPA. This is an organisation within IBEC that represents the entire industry supply chain from the nursery through to the timber processing sector. There are 27 members in the sector. We are the only organisation that produces a review of the forestry sector every year, and a copy of that has been sent to everybody. It essentially provides the statistics of the sector in the previous year. It informs us as to what we want to do in the next year.
I will outline some facts about Irish forestry for members who may not be familiar with the sector. Forestry takes up 10.5% of Ireland's area, as documented by imaging published last week by the forest service. There are over 20,000 forest owners in Ireland, with the vast majority of them farmers. The sector contributes 1.3% of GDP, or €2.2 billion on an annual basis, and last year there were €555 million in exports. There are 12,000 jobs in the sector, taking in everything from the nursery to processing sectors, along with supporting elements. The trees in Ireland grow at the fastest rate in Europe, so there is a competitive advantage in that respect.
Right now, we are at a critical stage in the sector as over the past 25 years there has been much planting, going from 6% in the late 1980s to 10.5% now. The vast majority of the planting has occurred in the private sector by farmers and investors. We are now coming to the stage where the industry is poised to start producing timber. Last year we produced just under 400,000 tonnes in the private sector, with Coillte producing the remaining 2.5 million tonnes approximately. Over the next decade, the private sector will increase ten-fold in timber production, so the Forestry Bill is critical to the development of the sector. It is very important to us that the Bill can facilitate timber production and afforestation, which has sadly not achieved targets in the past number of years for various reasons.
I will turn to aspects of the Forestry Bill. IFFPA has considered a number of areas and we have some issues relating to the development of the industry, costs and the regulatory burden that we have seen coming into the Bill. On the development of the sector, the Bill is far too focused on enforcement, with excessive measures having the potential to hamper growth in the sector. The requirement to replant, for example, is already hampering afforestation, and many farmers will not plant on land if they know it must stay as forestry and there are no options. The vast majority of these farmers will always keep forestry but if they are stuck with the option, they may not pursue that avenue. That is an impediment to afforestation.
The enforcement provisions within the Bill are draconian and overbearing. A colleague once told me that we are only dealing with trees and not gold bullion, and it is not critical to have many control measures in the sector. There are powers to be confirmed on officers of the State which will be hard on the sector; for example, there are powers within the Bill to allow an officer of the State to enter into lands and business premises without warrants. That overbearing action will increase risk and the costs in the sector. With regard to development of the sector, we recommend that the Bill's enforcement provisions be redrafted with a more proportionate response. As it stands, the Bill will discourage investment in the supply chain.
I can give an example in the proposed section 32 of the Bill.

Section 32 of the Bill provides that where a grant has been paid to any person under the legislation and that person is in breach of one or more conditions, "the Minister may recover such grant as if it were a simple contract debt and, notwithstanding the Statute of Limitations, may institute proceedings for such recovery within 20 years of the date of the breach". That is utterly ridiculous. One could possibly go along for 20 years like that. That measure, in itself, creates risk not just for the forest owner, but also for the forest manager. That risk must be built into the management processes of those businesses and therefore increases costs, because they must comply. We think the replanting obligation should be removed, because it hampers afforestation in the sector. As I said earlier, many farmers will not plant because of it.
Moving to the regulatory burden, I will focus on the felling licence system. We do not believe that what is proposed goes far enough in facilitating the sector. The amount of timber production from the private sector will increase nearly tenfold in the next decade. The Forest Service already cannot handle the felling licences it has, and that is for a far less amount of cubic metres per hectare per year. The system being proposed is over-burdensome and will not contribute to allowing the sector to grow as it must grow. The Bill envisages a requirement for management plans. While we would welcome management plans in principle, we do not believe they should be required for every plantation in the country. Where management plans are required, they should be integrated into the felling licence system. When one submits one's management plan, one should get one's felling licence. It should not be a separate system. The Bill does not integrate those two elements.
The power of the Minister to put burdens on people's folios where there is a replanting obligation on those folios is hugely cumbersome and expensive both for the landowner and for the State to administer it. That element has the potential to get completely out of control.
I will deal with the increased costs. The Bill states that there will be little or no increase in costs to the State or to business. We could not disagree with this more. The increased regulations required in the Bill will increase costs de facto. The State does not have the resources to administer the Bill as it is envisaged. It will have to increase its manpower dramatically. In addition, the requirements on forest owners to supply information, do management plans and the other requirements of the Bill will increase costs for them. It will also increase risk for them and, as a result, they will make different decisions. The Bill should be about facilitating the sector to grow, not putting barriers and red tape in front of forest owners and the forest industry.
There is another section of the Bill on fees, which is basically part of the increased costs. The Bill envisages fees. Again, this goes against what the preamble to the Bill talks about in respect of no increased costs to the sector. The Bill envisages that the Minister should be able to apply fees to felling licences, grant applications and other services for which the forest service wishes to charge. We believe that provision should be removed because even if it is left in the Bill without applying any fees, it increases risk for investors. They will wonder what fees will be imposed in the future and, if a fee is introduced now, how much more will that cost in the future. We need only look at prescription charges in the past. That, in itself, is an impediment to newcomers into the sector, in particular, and is extremely unfair on those who invested in forestry in the past in the expectation that they would not have to pay fees.
I have been in the business for approximately 20 years, and it is a brilliant business. It is a sector I love. I dream about it almost every night, to be honest. What I see now is a critical stage in its development and the Bill must be right to help it grow and create jobs for Ireland, especially in rural areas where job creation in other sectors just does not exist. The plea we make on this Bill is that it must focus on what the sector needs to grow and create jobs and wealth for Ireland.