Mr. Jason Fleming:

Certification is 70:30, as the Chair knows. Some 70% is certified. Most of us farmers are not certified - that is the 30%. We have called for a national certification to be rolled out for the past three or four years. I think the Department is working on a trial certification but it has not been rolled out yet. The sooner it is, the better. As for homegrown timber, there is plenty in this country for the moment to supply mills while this task force is set up. The Chair mentioned de-barking on the Scottish side. If timber was de-barked on the Scottish side and dried, meaning you bring the log up to a certain temperature, that would kill every pest on that log. We have no problem with that, which is why we spoke about biosecurity measures. We have no problem with imports as such. If this spruce bark beetle gets into this country, it will be the final nail in the coffin. We were at the committee this time last year with the mills. Two mills were promoting farmers planting - Glennon Brothers and Murrays Timber Group. On the day, they said they would rather use homegrown timber. We are asking, as our president has often done, whether the short-term gain is worth the long-term risk. There should be a temporary suspension and we should set up a task force and go through the biosecurity measures. The Minister of State, Senator Hackett, was at the IFA AGM during which we had a discussion and I also met her afterwards in the lobby in Bluebell. It would be a simple thing to set up a task force, get all the relevant bodies around the table and agree the biosecurity measures. Then we can put our hands on our hearts and say we did our best to keep the spruce bark beetle out. At the moment, we cannot do that.

I was in Scotland on behalf of the IFA and saw at first hand the damage the spruce bark beetle is doing to Scottish plantations. There are pest-free zones and they mention affected and unaffected areas - there is a line drawn on the map where one side is affected and the other is not. That is not good enough from our point of view. Where timber is loaded over in Scotland, it is not taken to the port, it is loaded on a floating pier on the ocean. The checks I saw were bark beetle boxes that are put up and checked every morning. That is in no way sufficient for us, to just check a box in the morning. We asked the Department if it has been to Scotland to see what security checks are being done. I do not think it has.