Mr. Fergal Leamy:

An announcement was made last week on the Wild Nephin project and transferring it to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS. Coillte is not precious about holding on to land. We should be using that land for the benefit of the State, whether it is for carbon sequestration or other projects. We have increased that over recent years and we are more than open to having that conversation.

There is potentially sometimes a conflict in managing to think for a commercial entity and carbon sequestration. I am of the view we should marry the two more clearly and put a value on carbon.

Coillte's core business and mandate is forestry. On the renewable energy side of it, we are trying to start it up to ensure we have a partnership. We do not want to become a utility company but focus on our core mandate of forestry. We have land which is suitable for renewable energy, which we mitigate and put back into forestry when we sell it. It would also be a missed opportunity if we did not support some of those renewable energy targets which the country must go after. We are keeping a distance in that area, however, to ensure it does not distract us from our core business.