Mr. Mike Glennon:

It is a difficult one for us to answer because we were not part of that decision and we are not sure. Our understanding is Coillte is a semi-State company. It has two shareholders. Ultimately, it is an arm of the State. We are surprised an arm of the State would put a fund together and bring in a State bank to buy land that is already planted. We are completely lost. That is why we are here to try to voice that position. We do not understand this. A total of 70% of this is to buy land that is already planted. What is that doing to help our climate change target? It seems a roundabout way to achieve the same thing. Coillte had €130 million in profits last year. It is an unusual vehicle to make this happen.

Without us focusing too much on that, the important thing is Ireland needs to meet its climate change targets. It needs to meet its afforestation targets, but why not make it easier for the farmer to plant because the win for this will be getting the farmer to plant? That should be the mission.

There is no market failure here. The State normally steps in when there is market failure. The failure here is in the bureaucracy. Farmers have proven in the past, as Mr. Murray has said, that they will plant when the environment is right. We welcome this new €1.3 billion fund but the bureaucracy is killing it.

In fact, a good piece of work will have to be done because farmers have been stung. There are farmers who planted in the past and were waiting for two years for felling licences. We need to be more customer-focused within the service to understand, if we want to get farmers on board, what we need to do and what is the correct environment. We need to give them guarantees. We cannot have them saying, "Put in the licence". We need to be signed up for guarantees and be here with issues we need to fix.