Mr. Mark McAuley:

Yes. With Mr. O'Brien's permission I will take this question. I will try to be brief. I thank the members for their questions. In terms of the questions from Deputy Carthy, I agree 100% that the current policy pleases nobody. It certainly does not work for the industry. It does not work for various of our NGOs or our farmers on the ground.

In terms of whether the industry accepts any responsibility, there is not a capacity problem in the industry. The industry has invested literally hundreds of millions of euro in the past number of years to have the capacity to deal with the timber that is available in huge quanta all over the country. There is no problem with the availability of timber. As the Deputy pointed out, much of it was planted in the 1980s and 1990s. It is all there. We have a great timber boom on our hands if we could only get the system to work. The industry has put in the investment and it has the expertise. The industry is very willing to adopt the new environmental regime, albeit that it brings with it new and additional costs and new burdens on the industry, but we are in the 21st century and we need to have rigorous environmental regulation and controls.

In terms of the percentage of broadleaves, that is somewhat of a million dollar question in terms of future policy. What we have to do is balance the commercial side with the native woodland. At the moment the vast bulk of broadleaves that are planted in this country are planted alongside commercial productive forests. In effect, one could say that the commercial pays for the broadleaves. I believe one would have to take a landscape approach to that. There are certain places where it is absolutely right to have commercial productive forests and in other places it is absolutely right to have native broadleaf forests, those that are developed principally for nature purposes. Already, approximately 25% of the Coillte estate is managed primarily for nature purposes and biodiversity. At the moment we are doing more than 30% broadleaves. Could we get that to 40% with the right model? I believe we could. Once we have the balance everything is achievable. As an industry we support all types of forestry. We are absolutely keen to push up the number of broadleaves being planted and the amount of native woodland being done as long as we can continue to supply timber to our sawmills, which in itself has huge environmental benefits in terms of locking up timber in our houses, structures and buildings because it is a long-life timber product.

That brings me to the scope for timber building. We need some reform of our building regulations. There are restrictions on the height to which a residential building can be built with a timber frame. Those regulations need to be looked at. There are 18-storey buildings in Norway and a new record is going to be set shortly in Canada. We need to look at that.

I would also look at things such as schools and community centres that could readily be built using timber technology and displace an awful lot of carbon-intensive materials. I read a report recently which stated that, with energy efficiency in our heating and lighting and where we get our energy from, much more focus is coming onto the embedded carbon in the building, the amount of carbon that is used in the materials. The focus is coming back onto that after many years during which we, quite rightly, thought that the energy efficiency of the building after it is built is the important thing.

The level of carbon sink is a function of the size of the forest estate. This country has an ambition to have 18% forest cover. It would take us a very long time to get there but if we could do 8,000 ha per annum and grow the forest estate, that would be the principal source of carbon sink. It must be well managed and looked at over a proper timeline, rather than taking snapshots here or there. Climate change is a multigenerational crisis that needs to be looked at over hundreds, rather than dozens, of years. A large forest estate must be managed properly. Separate parts of the estate should be managed for different reasons and that is how to tackle the carbon sink issue.

A number of the Deputies touched on appeals and licensing delays. The legislative change was focused on the forestry appeals committee, FAC. There is no question but that it is a critical piece of legislation. It is also a good piece of legislation from many perspectives and, if properly implemented, would deliver an enormous amount for us. On the other hand, there are 2,000 files stuck in the Department that we need to deal with. That is a question of resources, management and running a good process.

Deputy Fitzmaurice asked about the Mackinnon report. It is my understanding that a person was identified and is close to being appointed. That would be a positive development. If all 22 recommendations of the Mackinnon report could be implemented, it would do a lot for us, although there seems to be some sort of reluctance. The Minister wrote to the various stakeholders yesterday and today to invite us onto a new committee which will probably look at the Mackinnon report but I do not feel there is a focus on it now. The Department would say that a lot of those recommendations have been implemented but I am not so sure about that. There is a need for fundamental change in the process and system. There is certainly a need to bring in additional management and operational expertise. We need a group of people who can purely focus on running the process, aside from policy.

In response to Deputy Leddin, the best formulation of the need for long-term reforms was made by Professor John FitzGerald recently in The Irish Times where he wrote about moving away from a licensing model towards a regulatory model. That is the way it is done in other countries. There is no need for every piece of forestry activity to get a new licence and to be inspected many times over, in the same way that we do not need a garda on every street corner with a speed gun. We do not need forensic examination of every piece of forestry activity. It can be done on an audit or inspection basis. That would be a critical piece of work that the Department and Minister should start into straightaway. They should look to European models to see how forestry in regulated in other places.

Does that deal with most of the questions that were asked?