Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

I will deal with the first part first. The Deputy made a very wide-ranging statement and I am not sure I am going to get into the political stuff on democracy in Europe and so on. I am also trying to be straight-up here. I come in here and I have to present the facts. I cannot deal in aspirations or how things might be or should be in different circumstances.

We have state aid rules in the European Union. State aid rules are necessary for the protection of the Single Market and they mean everyone is playing on a level playing field across Europe. Ireland, by a country mile, is the biggest beneficiary of the Single Market. Agriculture in Ireland would be dead without the Single Market. It would not be dead without the CAP because it would survive in some way, but without the Single Market, it would be dead. State aid rules are there for the protection of the Single Market.

We provide grants to people to plant trees and, therefore, we need state aid approval. The conditions that are part of the new package were part of the conditionality for the state aid approval of the Irish forestry programme. That is the way it is.

You can argue the merits of that and what it does in the context of the complexity of the licensing process, but-----