Mr. Barry Delany:

We are serious about dealing with these issues. The Minister of State just today finished seeking people to join her forest strategy consultative committee, which is the replacement of the old forest policy group. A broad range of members and stakeholders across the forestry sector are part of that. Within that, the Minister of State has also committed to set up the ash dieback task force. That will be a subgroup of that grouping and, again, that will be set up very shortly.

In terms of the issue the Deputy raised, the programme we just had approved from the Commission has the facility for reconstitution in exactly that event, should there be a finding. To clarify, we did not really get into it here, but in terms of our own surveillance, there is surveillance at the point of entry but there is also ongoing surveillance. There are 400 points around the country surveying for more than 43 pests. Again, that is critical to underpin the plant health status of the forestry estate. It is really important. It is about reaching out through the forest health stakeholder grouping I discussed earlier to raise that awareness among people to know what they are looking for in their own forests so that we can know straight away about any issues that might occur. People are aware of how they can prevent issues happening in their own forests. That is really important. They are the two groupings.