Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

That is true. I take the Senator's correction on land quality. She is quite correct. If farmers planted willow on peat or very low quality land it would not work. It requires a reasonable quality of land to grow. In many marginal counties, there is enough land that is good enough to grow willow.

I cannot remember the exact figure for the amount of willow and miscanthus that has been planted. It is something like 3,000 ha or fewer - perhaps 2,500 ha - in the whole country, out of a total of 4.4 million ha of agricultural land. We are a long way from having some sort of problem in terms of land use.

However, we found another problem. Willow has to be able to compete. Farmers know willow is a new crop and is, therefore, risky. From their point of view anything that is new is risky, which is a reasonable attitude. Farmers who have the most skill in this kind of thing and would probably have the easiest access to equipment would be tillage farmers. In the past, the returns they made were more than they would have made from willow or miscanthus. A study carried out by Fiona Thorn of Teagasc on this some years ago showed that quite clearly. Dairy farmers would not participate because they got more money from dairying, therefore they would not give over their land to grow willow.

At that time, the crop did not pay tillage farmers. Given the current difficulties in the tillage sector, maybe they would be more open to it now. Some beef farmers would benefit by giving over some of their land. It is similar to the forestry sector. It is not a matter of getting rid of a beef enterprise. Rather, it is a question of a farmer tightening up his or her beef enterprise a bit. As we know, a lot of beef farming is done very extensively on land. A farmer could tighten up his or her beef enterprise on a smaller land area and then grow willow on the rest.

I repeat that the Government as a whole and all of us have to get our act together. We all share responsibility. We have to try to join up the chain, and that has proven somewhat difficult to date.

A number of years ago, Bord na Móna put together a really good package for farmers, if I recall correctly, who lived within 40 km of Edenderry. It was a really good package that incorporated our grant scheme but it could not get people to sign up. To this day, I am not sure why that was the case. I believe there is an opportunity here.