Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

With regard to Deputy Penrose's question, I have dealt with the issue of the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP negotiations.

Scotland was way behind for years and they turned it around and it is worth studying to see how they did it. The dynamic of land ownership in Scotland, however, tends towards larger holdings. If smaller numbers of people need to be convinced to plant then one can achieve a higher hectarage. The Scottish target is 11,000 ha or 12,000 ha and they are near enough to hitting that, but only in the last two years. They had been way behind and we are looking at that situation.

With regard to ash dieback I accept that restoration has taken longer than it should have. When we were trying to address the ash dieback the best practice was to try to eradicate it and then the reconstitution scheme came in. There are those who were affected who say that there was no real reward for them. While they continued to get paid the premium that could be eight, ten, 15 or 20 years of growth and it meant starting from scratch. On the question of not being allowed to replant, notwithstanding what I said to Senator Daly, there are exceptional circumstances. It certainly needs to be looked at. I accept that we should consider it to see what are the implications. Thinning and tending is one option in the reconstitution scheme and partial removal is another, which is a form of continuous cover where one removes affected trees while leaving the trees that appear to be resistant. There was a feeling that by doing a complete clear out of sites perhaps we were doing away with strains that were resistant, which undermined the efforts to rebuild or recreate a resistant strain of the species to the chalara fraxineadisease, ash dieback. As I said earlier, I intend to publish the findings as soon as possible. From memory, when we brought in the stakeholders to discuss this we included the GAA, the IFA, some of the forestry companies and some of the industry people. It was mainly the stakeholders who were involved with trees in the ground.