Mr. Brian Murphy:

Absolutely. Moving the business forward will require all of the stakeholders and parties to be for forestry and afforestation and to be supportive of the timber industry. There is no value to any of us in trying to plough on alone. I apologise if I get slightly parochial but one of the things I have spoken to my own team about is that we want to grow and must move forward but we cannot have another beef crisis, as we had recently. We must be able to continue to make the growers and landowners prosper. The processors must be able to do it and we must increase the markets for timber, which people want to buy, so that we create more value and can afford to reward all of the people investing in it.

It is a very competitive world. We have to balance commercial competitiveness and making money out of what we harvest with the environmental mix and the beauty of broad-leaf trees. Driving that forward is a matter of everybody talking and recognising each other's viewpoints. The industry wants to reach out and do that to ensure a bigger future for it and for the people. We see ourselves as a major employer, creating jobs in the area I live in, for example, and keeping people living there.