Mr. Mark Carlin:

That land would have come across with the national estate at the time. This land is largely blanket bog in the west of Ireland, for example, mountain tops that would not be planted. It would have been impossible to plant that. Even when we were planting peatlands, we would not have planted these areas. Some of them are now very valuable from a biodiversity point of view and we absolutely would not plant them. It is an element of the 30,000 ha we want to redesign. We have to work through this site by site. We need to be cognisant of the fact that re-wetting is a very good thing to do, not just from a climate but biodiversity perspective. The climate play here is long term. We have an immediate negative when the trees are removed and there is then a methane issue but, in the long term, it can be a very positive thing from a climate point of view.

As to the second question on matching timber targets, we will publish a long-term forecast again this year. We predict our volumes will be stable. We bring just under 3 million cu. m of timber to the market every year. We have to make sure we secure that. It is incredibly important for employment and building in Ireland, as well as for our commercial business. The areas I am talking about redesigning are not productive areas; therefore, they do not have a major impact on our productive capacity on the estate. We are trying to balance timber capacity and timber production for jobs and housing while improving biodiversity value in parts of our estate and meeting climate action targets.