Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

With regard to the report on "Morning Ireland" this morning, I would like to answer that first of all in the following way. In Scotland at the moment, they are planting 17,000 ha per year, which is a massive amount of timber. I see our job as being to compete with that. In other words, we want to plant. It is in the programme for Government and it is part of our policy. We want to get to 8,000 ha. We were doing that before. I can tell the Senator from personal experience because my brother Danny and I would have been involved in that work an awful lot in the 1980s and 1990s at a time when Ireland was hitting 8,000 ha, 9,000 ha and more in planting. Now, we are falling behind, but we have doubled what we were doing last year. We are getting progressively better because of the quicker licensing and the new programme we have.

The Senator talked about incentivising. I would say to both him and the person he cited that €1.3 billion into any sector in the period between 2023 and 2027 is a massive amount of money, and that is where this forestry programme is at present. There is a lot of money and there are a lot of schemes. There are a variety of schemes that were not there in the past. I will give the Senator one example. Agroforestry is something in which I really believe. That is where a farmer might have what we would call good green fields, but maybe he or she does not want to cut hay or silage or have them for grazing. That farmer can continue to avail of the payments he or she has at present. He or she can also come along and plant trees, and can still graze animals around them, but can get the additional payment that will come from that tax free. When we talk about tax initiatives, this Government and, indeed, previous Governments have always ensured that all payments deriving from forestry are tax free.

With regard to incentives, we are doing very well. We have new schemes that were not there before. There are other schemes. For instance, somebody might not like trees at all. We have a new scheme whereby people will be able to plant trees along hedgerows, at the edges of driveways or around sheds and yards and get an attractive payment for up to ten years, and they can do up to 1 hectare, which actually does not need any license. Therefore, there are a vast variety of new incentives. We are doing everything.

Forestry is very positive. If we stand back and look at it over the last number of years, we have had problems in forestry, but one of the biggest problems we have had is people speaking negatively of it. Nobody is putting a gun to anybody's head and telling him or her to plant trees. What we are saying is that it is an alternative for some but not everybody. It does suit some lands but not everybody's land. We are trying to incentivise it, however.

With regard to a new agency, the Senator must understand that, at present, we have a group that is doing excellent work called the timber in construction group. Maybe not everybody knows it is there, but that is a group of people from the industry who are leading in their fields. They are looking at greater use of timber. I will give the Senator a very important example. Last week, my son Jackie and I went to Galway and visited the university. We saw - it is actually frightening to see this - how people there were developing the use of timber so that it could replace steel, in other words, for going high. I have seen the product they are making. I have seen it being put under the stress. It is every bit as strong as steel. Now, the first-----