Mr. Nicholas Sweetman:

I will address some of the difficulties that may arise with the contracts. First of all it is important to note that while there are seven different main types of contract there are up to 35 different actual contracts in so far as each contract was negotiated individually with the farmer in question. In latter years the contracts could be said to have fewer problems but in the early years some of the contracts were completely opaque with regard to what was actually in the contract. I will take a particular example. There was a contract which was called the 1% clearfell contract whereby the farmers' income after the 20 year State subsidy was arranged so that when it came to clearfell, there would be a 1% payment to the farmer. I will give an example of how that might work. With a 40 year cycle, the State would pay the first 20 years and Coillte would pay the next 20 years. Let us assume the sum agreed was €10,000 per annum, and that would be for a reasonably large plantation.

If clearfell occurs at year 40 Coillte would have paid that farmer €200,000 over the 20 years. If it happened at year 30, which is more likely in the current climate, that farmer would have received €100,000 from Coillte. In addition that farmer would be responsible for replanting at year 30 instead of year 40 and the 1% which the farmer would get at year 30 would not be sufficient to pay for replanting. A farmer who was not aware of all this would find himself at year 30 with a clearfell forest and no money to replant it. Far from getting any money at the end he would be owing money because he would be legally obliged to replant. That is one possible problem under the contract. That is only one type of contract and I am not suggesting that all the Coillte contracts are like that because they are not. That, however, is definitely a problem.

A second problem is perhaps to do with liens on the land. If a farmer has a contract with Coillte for some section of the farm and wishes to build a shed and goes to the bank for a loan, he must get permission from Coillte because there is a lien on the land. He cannot conduct his business without the co-operation of Coillte. I am not saying that Coillte would not give permission, I am sure it would, but that is an issue for farmers.

A third very important issue is the business of the requirement to replant. One would assume that most farmers knew about it but the de factosituation is that they do not. As recently as yesterday, because I knew I was coming here, I contacted a lady who planted her entire 15 ha farm, 22 years ago with Coillte. I am not talking about someone who does not know her business. This person would really know her business. She was entirely unaware, 22 years later, that there was any requirement to replant, despite having had approximately 20 meetings with Coillte over the intervening period. She was aghast. She scrutinised her contract from start to finish and could find no mention anywhere of any requirement to replant. It was her own responsibility to know that she had to replant but if she had annual meetings with Coillte over 20 years somebody could have told her that she would have to replant after the end of the rotation.

Those are just some of the problems related to Coillte that are coming to us. I am sure Coillte is trying to address them. They are problems we do not believe are being dealt with at the moment. We had a constructive meeting two weeks ago with Coillte. I would have thought in the intervening two weeks it would have been a good idea for Coillte to at least contact all its partners and inform them that there is a helpline available. This did not happen. To this day Coillte has not sent any circular to its clients informing them that there is help available if they have a difficulty. Coillte told us at the meeting that it had received 60 calls to the helpline from among the 630 people who have contracts with it. I would respectfully suggest that if it received 60 calls out of 630 then in fact 400 of the 630 did not know a helpline existed.

It is quite possible that there are many people, like the pal I spoke to yesterday, who did not know there was a problem. She said she would never have planted trees on her land if she thought it was sterilised for future generations. She said she was never aware that she could not put it back into farming for her children. That is a major problem.