Dr. Gerhardt Gallagher:

Some of the thinking on the Bill goes back to that time. Much has changed since then. The Bill is restrictive rather than enabling. It is full of rules, regulations and strictures whereas the Minister should give a broad enabling brief. That is why we suggested as part of his policy that he should be able to review and comment on policy. He will need help to make the policy. It should be there in the Bill rather than arise out of a strategic study taking place separate from the Bill. Is the Minister’s name on the strategic study? It seems unclear.

With regard to a brief on targets and achieving same, obviously one would not expect figures to be put into the Bill but the Minister should have some input. We have not had a report that specifically deals with forestry because since the 1990s the issue has been part of the wider departmental report. Up to the point that Coillte was established the forestry service used to produce a detailed annual report on the forestry situation at the end of each year. For example, it stated how much was planted, how much was felled and issues like that plus what was happening on the disease front. Now it seems to be a bit anomalous to depend on organisations such as my society, which reproduces planting figures and so on for its members, the wider public and associations such as Irish Timber Growers Association which reproduces the planting figures in its yearbook yet there is no publication containing the figures collated by the forest service.

I shall make a point about land use because it is crucial to the legislation. Land use has not been mentioned in the legislation but the Minister did state something about land targets. Again, we see some of that coming out of the strategic review and it has presented figures that look very difficult to achieve under present circumstances. If there is a doubt about the annual planting figures proposed in the review then there is a doubt about the continuing production of forests. Studies have been conducted which show that the availability of timber depends on it being produced in a forest. Of course there is a delay factor of between 20 to 40 years. Therefore, the increased planting that took place in the 1990s will produce volumes of timber. However, there is a danger posed by the collapse in the forests and thereafter so suddenly one is left with a big collapse in the supply of timber which will have an effect further down the industry chain.

Recently I was involved in the preparation of a report on the availability of land and how real the pool of land available for forestry is. It is much more restrictive than had been thought previously for two reasons. There is a huge amount of competing interests for land. Of course there will be competing interests for the better land. Certain assumptions had been made on the availability, for example, of wet grasslands. It was assumed that a very significant supply of wet grasslands would remain. On examination of the figures one discovered that there are severe restrictions on such lands in terms of what is happening in agriculture at present. For much of the land that we speculated would come into production there will be severe agricultural competition for same. Plus there are restrictions on the marginal land that can support forestry. However, there is a very slow process of approval for farmers to plant marginal land which often brings in an element of better land. That is another threat to the land supply and ultimately the timber supply. There has been no reference to the Minister having targets or reviewing targets in the Bill and to me that seems to be quite an omission.

I wish to make another point regarding my past career and the research issues. I happened to be driving along one day when I heard that quangos were going out of fashion. The first quango to be eliminated was COFORD which I think was the first quango. It struck me as being the one quango that was doing something for the country yet it was the first one to go. COFORD still exists as a subsection of the Department but its independence for instigating, funding and supervising research is gone. I believe that we need research more than ever. Two diseases, chalara and phytophthora, pose a great threat and could seriously damage standing forests. International trade takes place so we do not know what else will happen. Therefore, the first part of the Bill needs a specific reference that the Minister can undertake, or authorise to be undertaken, research into forests and forest products. Years ago what was known as the Institute of Industrial Research and Standards undertook forest products research which made a very valuable contribution but that research has disappeared over the years. Research has been mentioned once under the part devoted to the statutory instruments. However, it is not mentioned in the primary or first parts of the Bill but that is where it should be mentioned. If it were then it would allow the Minister to set up something in his own right. Teagasc exists for the agricultural sector and has a great deal of freedom to undertake and supervise research. My society feels that forestry research should be granted the same importance as Teagasc as it is a very large sector of the industry. I could go on about the matter.

Climate is part of the land supply business because the more land one devotes to forestry the more carbon can be sequestered. Grass calculations reflect carbon emissions and have an inverse effect because the more clear felling and the less planting takes place, the more carbon emissions will increase. I shall leave my comments at that, and I thank the Chairman.