Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 27 February 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Farm Foresty Partnership Agreements: Discussion

3:30 pm

Mr. Bill Stanley:

It is different from these partnerships in that it is designed for existing forests. It is for private forest owners who do not have an existing relationship with Coillte, so they are not in this batch of 630 partners. For individual private forest owners whose grant premiums have expired or are about to expire, we have launched a product called Coillte premium partners. With that, we would enter a partnership at that stage. That partnership enables us, similarly to these 630, to share some of the clearfell profits with the partners over a period of years. It is designed to give continuity of income after the grants expire and then a share of clearfell profits. No new forests are created with Coillte premium partners. With the nature of those differences, the Coillte premium partners agreement is typically for an approximately 20 year period, whereas these agreements are typically for a 40 year period. There are some key differences but it is a partnership agreement.

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