Mr. Mike Glennon:

Prices in Ireland will have to increase with this extra funding. Bringing more money into a market will increase land prices as a result. There is no doubt about it. This Coillte-Gresham House joint venture appears to be positioned as if it will help sort our planting issues, but it will not. We believe it would be much more beneficial for the forestry sector if the Department and Coillte spent more time trying to resolve the problems in getting planting and encouraging farmers back into planting because some of them have had really bad experiences.

No less than three years ago under the same regime, we had a boat chartered every six days to bring logs into Ireland to keep our plant in Fermoy going. On the other hand, farmers were ringing us and begging us to take logs but they could not get felling licences. That was only three years ago. We are stumbling from one bureaucratic nightmare to another and we are not fixing it. Bringing in this other vehicle is doing very little to help fix the problem. We would like the Government and the Department to place more emphasis on streamlining the planting and licensing system both through planting applications and road licences to make it functional for the ordinary farmer to participate in forestry. We can easily forget that we can grow trees twice as fast as our Scandinavian competitors. Forestry is the only issue that can solve climate change and housing. It is a no-brainer for us. Every effort should be made to promote forestry in Ireland and to get the farmer really behind forestry.