Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

We agonised over that a good bit.

It is not a new issue. In the context of the native tree area scheme, the fact is one can plant in the corners of fields and along margins. The scheme need not intrude, even if it is permanent, on the farm enterprise. There are agroforestry options for people so they can continue farming in the field and plant trees at a much looser density and that is an attractive option for farmers.

Regarding the permanence, I get that. It is a permanent land use change but what we cannot have is deforestation. I hear the view expressed that this is not going to happen because if the forest is there for 25 or 30 years, it will be replanted. That is not the case, however. What we will end up with is deforestation if we allow forests to be removed once they are harvested. If we do that, the State will have invested in an asset that is intended to contribute to mitigating our climate change burden and it goes in 30 years' time. We just cannot do that. Then you are stuck. You have to replant, you do not get premium in the second period and you will get the benefit then at harvesting time and thinning time. That is the commercial opportunity for the second rotation. We have to think about whether there are ways to generate a more continuous income from that transaction. There might be ways of developing equity or loan schemes, for example, that will pay an income every year and then at harvest time it will be some kind of a repayment of the funding paid through the second rotation.

I am thinking out loud here, which is a very dangerous thing, but it is something we have been thinking about. That barrier to the second rotation may need to be resolved with some kind of an imaginative way of-----