Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 12 December 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Coillte's Annual Report for 2016 and Climate Change: Discussion

On value added to products in the Mayo area, the pulp of the thinnings which comes off the forests goes to MEDITE SMARTPLY. However, most of the logs are processed by two customers, ECC and the Murray Timber Group, which have large processing plants in the west. I agree with the Senator’s point about bringing value-added product and jobs into those areas, over and above what we do there. The biomass and the recent renewable heat incentive, RHI, scheme supporting local initiatives might be an area on which to build. Similarly, in recreation and tourism, we are trying to enable more of our sites to be used in more sustainable long-term plans such as the Lough Key development in Roscommon, done in conjunction with Roscommon County Council. These are the types of projects which bring life to some of those areas.