Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

There are probably a number of reasons and we must examine our own conscience when it comes to the development of the next programme and the next CAP. One reason is that there is natural resistance among farmers to planting land and the Deputy knows this. Our view is this is a fantastic potential source of income for farmers that can co-exist with rearing livestock. This is a message we need to get across to people.

Despite the fact our planting has decreased, our overall stock of trees is higher than it has ever been. There has been a significant increase in the overall stock of trees in recent years. Perhaps there comes a point when the overall stock is increasing at which each additional hectare becomes more difficult to deliver.

There has also been a fair bit of negative publicity about forestry. We have seen-----