Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I hope I am not next in line to Senator Lombard the day he decides he will not be brief. Nearly everything has been covered. I have a couple of hypothetical questions. I know the answer Mr. Gleeson will possibly give, which will be that it is a political decision. We all know and we all admit that at this stage we need solutions. It is not about how we got to where we are. We will not touch 8,000 ha for the foreseeable future. We are talking about trying to get people in and we see the drop-off. A lot of people applied when their licences got held up in the backlog and who have totally changed their minds and will not sow trees.

To get them back, for talk's sake and this is where Mr. Gleeson does not give the answer that it would be a political decision, if we decided to reduce our target to 6,000 ha, that may be achievable. Mr. Gleeson said the money is there and it is based on 8,000 ha. We said we will spend the same money. We would be reducing our target by 25% so we would be upping the premiums for everything by 25%. Does that mean going back to state aid rules and could the conditionality change? I am speaking hypothetically. Am I speaking stupidly or it is something that realistically could be looked at?

If we reached 6,000 ha and held 6,000 ha consistently going forward I think it would be a great achievement from where we are at the moment. We have to bear in mind, going forward, and I do not if any contingencies are being done in the Department that look way forward, we will not have timber in 20 years and we are supposed to be trying to expand the use of timber in timber frame houses. Even in the shorter term, how will we square the circle of our net zero calculation and balance sheet where 8,000 ha was built in on one side of that ledger and we now all know we will not touch 8,000 ha. That balance sheet must be balanced also. How will we do that? Is there any contingency plan or any forward looking being done at that? Serious changes will have to be made to balance the under-achievement of what was put into that calculation of 8,000 ha.