Ms Vivienne Jupp:

What was targeted was 8,000 ha but only 1,500 ha will be done. I will have to take that one away. I am unaware of that at the moment.

Our plan for biodiversity is to put some more land into biodiversity areas and plant some native trees there, which take much longer to grow. It may not necessarily be the kind of wood the construction industry wants. It generally wants soft wood.

Nobody has approached me about wind farms at all. I am aware that Coillte has a relationship or joint venture, FuturEnergy, with the ESB. Not many of the planned wind farms they wish to have have gone through the planning process. They will take some time to get through that process, get constructed and put in place. In the longer term, the goal is to provide 1 GW of energy from wind.

My understanding is that the one we planned takes about 40 years before it is ready to be harvested so it is a long-term commitment for people who want to get into it but there are good returns. It is a commodity product so prices do vary over time. We have had some good times in the past but because it is a commodity product, one does not know how that would be but we can manage the cutting and harvesting of the trees to when things are good.