Dr. Ken Byrne:

I thank the Deputy. I will try to address some of those points. I am neither a lawyer nor an employee of another State institution, so I am not in a position to comment on those elements. I will put my own experience on the table. I come from a community in County Kildare where, when I was a child, everybody worked in Bord na Móna. My father did and that put food on the table. At that time, that was perceived to be the right thing to do for that reason. Much as we might look back now on past land uses and consider those decisions to be wrong in our current context, and perhaps they were, it is important to understand why those changes took place and that we should not continue to make such changes.

I do not think any pristine bogs are being drained now to plant trees. I would be very surprised if that were happening. We must, though, find a way forward. I agree there is every reason to be pessimistic. I have to be honest and say I can find these reasons all the time, and there are, of course, other reasons to be pessimistic about the world too. I agree, therefore, with Dr. Moran that we must be optimistic and believe we can do this because the alternative is just too much to think about. We must change the way society is moving. I return to the point Dr. Moran made regarding trying to chart a way forward for our landscape which looks at what is the balance between all these things we wish to do. We must grow food, whatever this food may be, we must sequester carbon and we must try to protect our water. We must try to find a balanced way forward in doing all these things and this is challenging and difficult, but we need to get on with it. We need to do it now.

There is a great groundswell of goodwill among people out there. Dr. Moran mentioned this in some of the examples he gave, and I ask him to forgive me for speaking on his behalf so much, and it testifies to this fact. This goodwill must be harnessed. People must be empowered to undertake these changes. Equally, they must be allowed to make mistakes. Land use is a diverse, mixed and complex topic, with a host of different interacting factors. We can of course try to decide the best way to move forward but we will make mistakes. We should not, however, punish others for making these mistakes and for trying to find a way forward in respect of land use, rewarding people or whatever the case may be. We need our forests to deliver timber as well as all these other services. What the balance in this regard should be is a question for discussion of course. Have I responded in some way, Chair?