Ms Imelda Hurley:

We have just over 800 members of staff in Coillte at the moment. We have about 1,200 contractors with reasonably long-term contracts. Contractors represent a very important part of how Coillte manages the overall estate.

The Deputy asked about farmers. I am a farmer's daughter and have reflected long and hard about farmers getting into forestry and afforestation. I acknowledge that recent years have been a challenging for the sector, but considerable progress has been made. When we appeared before the committee a few years ago, the discussion focused on licensing, backlogs and availability of sawlogs to go to mills. That has all moved on very considerably. Work is ongoing under Project Woodland to review regulation and come up with a regulatory framework. Everyone believes it needs to be as streamlined as soon as possible so that it is straightforward for everybody to know which licences are needed and to be able to get them in a reasonable timeframe. The backlog has reduced considerably.

Critical for farmers getting into afforestation now will be the forestry programme which of course needs to come into being and get going in Ireland and needs the review in Europe. That is an appropriately generous programme which rightly recognises that the farmers should get premium for the longest period of time at 20 years with 15 years for the non-farmer category. It is important that the programme should incentivise farmers specifically.

There is a job of work for the entire industry to do. That includes Coillte, others across the industry and the Department. We all need to promote forestry. It will be a critical enabler of climate action. In some ways it will represent a cultural change for some farmers. I can certainly speak from the experience of the discussions we have had at home. It is a necessary part of our future land use. The other critical piece is more demand for timber-framed homes. Strong demand for timber will create a pull-through factor which will also help to create the momentum for people to get into the sector.