Ms Bernie Gray:

On the possibility of a hard Brexit, I responded to one of Senator Conway-Walsh's points. In making its preparations for Brexit, Coillte is also facilitating its sawmill customers in their preparations and, as the Deputy mentioned, Glennon Brothers is one of those customers. It is making those preparations in the context of a group which has been established with IBEC and will continue to do so.

On the staffing and human element of Coillte, part of the consequences of efficiencies is the production of cash and an increased delivery in the return on forestry, which gives Coillte and the State options that they did not have before. The Deputy made the point that people can seem invisible but more than 800 people are employed in Coillte and there are 1,200 contractors.

The model of resourcing in Coillte has changed but there should still be visibility of people. As I pointed out, Coillte is continuing to recruit forestry graduates and has a forestry graduate programme under way.

On forestry targets, one of the points I made earlier was that Coillte's capacity to acquire land for afforestation is not economically viable because it is not incentivised to do so. Without further incentivisation, the cost of land makes that prohibitive for Coillte. The company is conscious of the afforestation targets but the issue is at what cost that is done. Part of our previous discussion focused on adopting a different economic model nationwide for the next phase of afforestation. This would involve the returns expected from forestry being reduced somewhat as part of the compromise that must always be made between scaling up and efficiencies and effectiveness. We continue to bear that in mind.