Mr. Paddy Murray:

I am here on behalf of Murray Timber Products. I disagree with the State being involved in the manufacture of commodities. It does not happen anywhere else in the world. I do not feel it should happen here. We spoke earlier about the scarcity of raw material. We know that a large proportion of the raw material that is going into these board plants could be processed in the saw mills at a far higher price. We would be giving the State a far better price. It is totally wrong that this form of activity is taking place. There is no transparency with Coillte. Someone spoke earlier about trust. There is no trust between the industry and Coillte. This problem is getting worse by the day. I will give an example. We have spoken about responding to the market. We have to go out and find markets. Everybody in the timber business has done that successfully. After we take on orders, we have to bid for the raw material every two weeks to ensure we can supply what we have said we will supply. When we take on an order, we do not know what price we will have to pay for our raw material. The shortage that is causing this difficulty is certainly added to by the fact that Coillte is involved in the board mills.

It is supplying the board mills with timber that we could otherwise buy and use for orders in the United Kingdom, France and elsewhere. We disagree with that approach.

On harvesting, I and all the other companies represented here import timber from Scotland. One can have a shipload of timber delivered from Scotland by making a couple of telephone calls. In the case of Coillte, however, we once recorded making 23 telephone calls to the company to have one lorry load of timber delivered and we still did not get the load. That should give members an idea of what we are dealing with. Coillte should not be involved in anything other than growing the forests that this country badly needs. It should not be involved in any other activity.