Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses are just not getting the message of what we are saying. We are saying where there might be families living at the end of a road, if the land is planted, no matter how one does the maths and no matter what is created, they leave that area because the trees are there. There is no point in saying they are not there. We are not saying they should have no forest. Furthermore, what is happening - and this is aided and abetted by Ireland - is that investment companies are coming in and getting the same grants as Irish farmers to invest for the pension funds of people in other countries, and the Irish farmers cannot compete if they want to make land out of it. They cannot compete when the land goes for sale because these companies have huge investments behind them, and we have not tackled this as a country. There is even a crowd in Norway, with which I am sure the witnesses are well familiar, getting AIB funding and coming into this country that will spend something like €90 million or €100 million on buying up land, while we are left high and dry. This is Irish money and Irish property, no more than when the recession hit, going out of the country.