Mr. Ciar?n O'Connor:

We need to plant more trees, and that can work two ways. The farming industry will say it does not want to lose land. We must get a balance where people see it is economically viable to do so. It works very well in the United States, funnily enough, where most of the forests they harvest are naturally grown. The farmer cuts down his or her woodland every 20 years to pay for whenever his or her children go to college or whatever. It is within a system but they have it very well-balanced because since 1908, the Americans knew the quantum of timber that was in their country and what they did about building with it. They have had those building blocks for many years. We could learn a lot from looking at how the Americans went about it.

We need to get more land under timber and ask what the methodologies of positives are. On the positives, when I came back from working in Canada and worked on a project for Irish timber many years ago, we found that the industry did not have the right mix, almost like the building industry. We did not have people who could dry wood or stress grade it. All of that is now in place in Ireland. What we need is the quantum to put through so that a company like Glennon Brothers does not have to bring that quantum in from Scotland to keep its factory going. If we want to do that, that is what we need. Glennon Brothers developed markets abroad in Japan, England and elsewhere. Therefore, the capacity is there now. The calibre of people operating - certainly in the top five mills - is second to none. The quantum is what we need. We need to maybe leave outside the door our view that a conifer equals a bad tree and a broadleaf equals good. There is room for both and both need to be accommodated. The land quality decides the variability of what one can plant. If one does not have decent enough land, one cannot grow oak whereas spruce and others will grow on that land. It is trying to get that balance. At the moment, there are parts of the country in which people feel too many trees are being planted, like County Leitrim. People feel there are too many trees and they do not want that. We must, therefore, get a balance. We also have to do it with the farming community, however, in order that the it can see why it should transition from what it is doing at the moment to a different area. It must be economically viable for farmers to do so, however. The Government needs to take that seriously.