Mr. Gerard Murphy:

There is an issue with it because obviously the afforestation levels have been dropping off. This year, they will be between 5,000 and 6,000. It comes down to the barriers to afforestation and how they can be addressed. There are a number of barriers. Many members spoke about land availability and unenclosed land and how we can increase the availability of land in the right areas to enable further planting of forests. This issue needs to be addressed. It is a structural issue as opposed to an incentives issue. Land price is making it difficult from an economic point of view to plant trees. Another issue for farmers is the permanency of land use change in that once they have agreed to plant trees longer term they have locked in that land use. In other land uses, it is possible to change on a regular basis. We need to address how we can overcome that. From a policy point of view, forests and carbon is very important. We need forest cover and our current forest cover is very low. Permanency of land use is driving some of the behaviour of farmers. As I said, they believe that once they lock in land that is it. We need to address this issue.

Another issue is continuity of income. This is an issue around the incentive schemes. We need to examine how the incentive schemes around agriculture and forestry are constructed as they tend to be working in two separate streams. We need to integrate forestry much more into a land use strategy where it is seen very much as another form of agricultural land use. The integration of the different incentives must be considered. A number of members alluded to the issue of continuity of income and how we can address the gap between year 20 and clear fell.

There are thinnings but, from that point of view, it gives farmers greater certainty about their income and when material will come out. That comes down to education and training. The forest culture in Ireland is quite low. In Europe, forestry is seen very much as part of the farm enterprise but we are still at a much more immature stage in Ireland, given that forestry is, one could argue, only 100 years old. It is hundreds of years old in Europe.