Mr. Ciar?n O'Connor:

We need to develop it in the future. We are actually working with Coillte and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on doing an exemplar building. We put forward a building last week for Coillte to consider, which would be a public building. People could see the results and we would publish how we went about it. That will hopefully get approval in the next two months or so. Ireland as part of the European Union is a very small quantum of the use of that, even if we get to a much higher use than we do at the moment. Therefore, we are always going to have to import it.

For instance, the way the Finns have done it, they can produce nearly half the quantity of what Europe needs in one plant in the south of Finland. They took the view eight years ago that they were going to invest in that and now they are getting the benefit. Eight years ago, people were not sure whether that technology would translate across but now with these pioneer buildings, it has been proven that it does work. The next step is to ask whether we need to have that as part of our kit, as it were, to build for density. It brings in the argument of what level of height we build to. Even to build to reasonable heights without going too high, however, having the advantage of cross-laminated timber is possible. Research has been done on that in National University of Ireland, NUI, Galway. We know from examples Coillte had made in Austria that Irish timber would be suitable. The question is how we now partner to go forward as a country. We must also then have the right quantum of timber to do that. We cannot set something up and not be able to feed it. That is where we need the extra quantum of tree plantation to happen.