Mr. Gerard Murphy:

Contractors are a very valuable partner. Between harvesting, establishment and haulage, we employ many contractors. Over recent years we have put in very strong procurement as part of compliance. All our contracts are tendered with very transparent criteria. In the past three years in particular we have recognised that in tendering to contractors, one of the matters was security. With respect to investment, they found the annual tenders to be quite difficult, and we have now moved to longer term contracts, including three-year contracts and beyond for both establishment and harvesting over the past three to four years. We have made substantial moves, first of all in being totally compliant in that the vast majority of contracts are competitively tendered with clear criteria, and on top of that we have moved to longer-term contracts to give security of work for these people.