Mr. James Geoghegan:

Good evening to all the members of the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I run a company that imports and distributes creosote fencing materials. The European importing ban is coming in at the end of March and basically after that, we have no replacement product lined up for the Irish market. From talking to other importers, everybody is in the same boat. There is new treatment coming on line but it is not there yet in the quantities required to fulfil the market demands. As we stand at the moment, co-ops and contractors are running out of material. With the demand on fencing this year due to the new agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, scheme and the new targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS, grants that are coming out, there will be a huge demand on timber and the stock is not going to be there to satisfy the market. Farmers are going to be in big trouble. They are simply not going to have enough product to do all they need to do. There are 46,000 farmers taking part in the ACRES scheme and the minute they begin, the first thing every farmer will have to do is to use quite a lot of fencing to fence off the environmental areas and all the drains and rivers. That is going to create an extra pull on fencing compared to other years. It will take a lot of fencing to do that. Then with the ban on creosote for the equine sector, there is absolutely no replacement for a timber fence to replace creosote fencing to fence horses. There is a new TAMS grant out now for horse fencing. Basically horses will just eat the timber and the tanalised type treatments. We need to get creosote held in production, definitely for the horse fencing and for cattle and sheep fencing, until we have enough product to satisfy the market. From what we are seeing, with the volume of creosote that is being imported, the importers, some of whom are here tonight, do not have the raw material available. The new type plants that are needed to for the new type of treatment are not up and running yet. I was actually talking to one of my suppliers this morning and they are going in to look for planning permission to build their plant. They are talking about two years before they are up and running. They are based in the UK and have not received a license yet for this new chemical that is coming on the market. Richard O'Connor will explain to the committee about the new chemical, its properties and how it works.