Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 19 November 2013
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Annual Report 2012: Discussion with Coillte
5:10 pm
Mr. Gerry Britchfield:
We sell pulp wood on the open market. We have other customers for pulp besides the boardmills but we make no apology for supplying our boardmills with pulp wood. They support 300 jobs in the south east directly and 300 or 400 indirectly. They are extremely good and vibrant businesses and are very innovative. We believe they have a great future. We are quite proud of them. As to whether it conflicts with competition law, we do not believe it does. There is no conflict in terms of competition law with supplying mills one owns with pulp wood one owns. There is no conflict there.
With regard to the Coillte forest restructuring, the purpose of the Coillte-----