Mr. Paddy Purser:

Many of the points being made are related to the different products and services forestry offers. The questions from the members have been fantastic. As elected members, I presume they reflect the demands on forests from society. It is clear that a great deal is asked of our forests in terms of the social, environmental and commercial services they provide.

It is not a question of saying that these forests are delivering biodiversity, these are delivering recreational value and these are where we go to get our timber. We can do all those things. In some forests there is a greater emphasis on one product or service than in others but all forests should be capable of producing many or all those products and services. We need to get away from the idea that the function of a forest is to produce timber and nothing else. That has been alluded to and I know that Coillte is working on policies and practices around that. What we are advocating is the continuous cover forest management system which offers the opportunity to commercially manage forests. I am speaking from experience here. Deputy Niamh Smyth very kindly referred to me earlier as an ecologist but I am not an ecologist. I am a commercial forester; that is my job. I manage commercial forests for private forest owners whose bottom line is that they need a cheque from timber sales. They get that cheque but we are also able to manage those forests through skills we have developed to deliver the other social and environmental services. This is part of a forestry culture that we need to develop in Ireland. The way in which the forest sector in Ireland developed was related to the fact that we had only 1% of land under forest at the start of the last century. There was an emphasis on planting new forests and that was achieved. Now we need to move on and figure out how to transition those forests into more permanent and multifunctional spaces that deliver on the demands of society, as reflected in the questions posed today.