Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The big downside of this is that mills have to import from outside the island in order to keep going just for tax reasons. There are a massive number of jobs in really rural areas in the mills, so it is not just affecting the guy who sells the trees. There is a knock-on effect on the viability of some of our very large and successful timber mills, which have survived the downturn intact, amazingly, so I am a bit surprised that the wise heads in the Department of Finance cannot recognise that they are losing the PAYE tax and PRSI from mill workers.