Mr. Gerry Egan:

To elaborate on that, there is a huge appreciation in the forest product sector of the use of biomass for renewable heat because it is far and away the biggest user and has been for very many years. All the sawmills that have kiln drying facilities burn their own sawdust to generate heat as part of the drying process. We would be a big user of biomass in our Medite plant. We use it in any number of different forms. We bring in bundles of brash and bundles of branches from our own forests that we use as a fuel. We use recycled wood and sawdust as boiler fuel so in one sense, the committee is speaking to the converted in terms of the value of wood for biomass. We have a very clear view that the real value of using wood fibre in the energy sector is for heat applications rather than for electricity general applications where wood is inherently inefficient.

The other use of renewable heat is firewood. We have seen an explosion in the demand for firewood over the past number of years where people have moved away from oil, particularly in rural areas where open fires have come back into fashion. One really good example that is worth talking about relates to one of our customers in the North called Boyd Bedding. It uses wood fibre in two really innovative ways. It has a very big export business where it takes relatively low-value pulp wood and makes horse bedding out of it for export to places like Dubai and Qatar for Olympic show jumpers and grade one racehorses. It has now entered into a significant contract with us to heat its entire processing operation also using relatively low-value pulp wood from Donegal. Going back to the innovation agenda, there is a considerable amount of activity happening below the radar where people are all the time looking at added-value ways of taking what is a fairly basic commodity and seeing whether they can add value and jobs to that.