Mr. Seamus Dunne:

I thank Mr. Delany. To answer the Chair's question directly, we do not have staff working in Scotland. It is the Scottish authorities who carry out the works there. They look at all the felling sites that are being felled for Ireland. They examine about 200 trees or so per site. There has never been a finding of the spruce bark beetles in the pest-free area, PFA. They have far more lures dotted around Scotland. They have billet traps, and they carry out aerial surveys twice a year within the pest-free area. The key thing is that we would then rely on, in the first instance, the phytosanitary certificate that comes from Scotland. All the logs that come from Scotland are what we call red-routed. They can only pass the port. This is since Brexit. Before Brexit, there were no border controls, so since Brexit all of these are red-routed. They can only be released when we are satisfied they can be released. We would do a documentary check on the phytosanitary certificate. We would make sure, as Mr. Delany mentioned, that no logs can come in from any other place in Europe other than this pest-free area. This is the only place in Europe where the spruce bark beetles we have here are also absent. No logs can come in from Germany, Spain or France, and that is what the plant health regulations state.