Mr. Mike Glennon:

In fairness, to put context to it, this is nothing about Gresham House. Gresham House is a good and successful business. It is a fund that wants to make a return, and we can not condemn it for that. The key issue here is that we have the lowest planting since 1943. The issue is about the bureaucracy in people planting; that is the problem. It is an unusual move for Coillte to take the stance that it has, and it is unusual for the Government to support that.

The issue here is our lowest level of planting and the bureaucracy that has driven farmers away from the system. There is no market failure. As Mr. Murray said, when the opportunity was right, farmers planted with a vengeance and hence we have the private forestry today. We cannot see the fix that this brings. If 70% of the fund is to buy existing forestry, we cannot see what that does for climate change either. It does not make any sense from that perspective. This is not taking a cut at Coillte or at Gresham House. We are at the lowest level of planting since 1943 and we need to deal with that. We need to understand the failures that have existed in the Government.

The Deputy mentioned Scotland. A number of years ago the Scots were planting 5,000 ha and were worried as to what to do. It brought in the Mackinnon report and implemented its recommendations. Scotland is now at 12,000 ha and heading towards 17,000 ha. After seeing the work that Mackinnon did, we got him involved in Ireland and he reported in 2019. We then set up another review body to review his recommendations. That proceeded on to Project Woodlands. We had a Project Charter. We set up four working groups: a working group on backlogs; a working group on a shared national approach; a working group on organisation development; and a working group on effective processes, legal and regulation review. We have a project board which has issued five reports. Then we had presentations from Phillip Lee and Grant Thornton.

Then we got into consultation at a very wide level. We had the public attitudes survey on forestry in December 2021. We had the youth dialogue report in January 2022. We had the assessment of the attitudes of communities in April 2022. We had an online public consultation survey in May 2022. We had a deliberative dialogue on forestry in June 2022. We also had this public consultation. Coillte then did its own review. We have brought in the recommendations from the Mackinnon report and we were doing probably around 4,000 ha or 5,000 ha. We are now down at 2,500 ha because we are still thinking and talking about what to do. Scotland brought in the report, listened to the experts and implemented it. It is at 12,000 ha and heading towards 17,000 ha.