Mr. Simon White:

How can we get insurance? We have stupid things in the legislation. Anybody who puts in a forest roadway has to allow the public access to it. Did Members know that? Most people do not. With security on your farm or your land, with your machinery and everything else, do you want to allow the public walk through it? No other sector is asked to do that. If you are given a grant to build a building, such as a cowshed, do you have to allow the local community have meetings in the summer in your hay barn? It does not work that way, but we have to allow the public. If the public come onto our farm roadways to walk through our farms, and if one of them throws a bottle to the side and the sun hits it, there could be a fire. If they come in and light a nice little bonfire, that is all very well and everybody thinks that is lovely and we should provide this lovely benefit to society, but there are huge risk factors and we cannot get insurance. It is not available at any amount that makes it worthwhile, so we face those risks.

We need the State to get serious about growing trees if we are going to do what we say to the EU we are doing and as regards the climate change things to which we have signed up. We are going to fail. We need political leadership. What if we had it? What if we had a strong Minister who understood and could tell her minions in her Department what to do and stop listening to the rubbish coming from them? They basically do not want to do the job. They do not want to look for more money, but more money is needed to do this. It cannot be done without more money.

As we said, we are not going away. It took 40 years for the people affected by the Stardust fire to get it. We are not going to go away but we will be replaced by the younger generation, who will still be coming to this thing unless it is dealt with. Why not deal with it? It just needs leadership. The Taoiseach the other day congratulated the Minister of State on doing this and said how hard she and the Department worked. Since the six months, all they have been able to come up with is a one-thing-fits-all. No work of any merit has gone into designing this scheme. A five-year-old could have done it. The Taoiseach needs to lead. He needs to understand that if we want to deal with forestry, we are going to have to take it seriously. We believe - I do not know if everybody else does - that forestry has a huge future in this country. If we lose it, and at the moment it is looking like by 2035 we will no longer have a forestry industry, we are going to have to import all that timber. Our mills and suchlike do not mind. They are importing the timber at the moment, chiefly from Scotland or wherever else they can get it. They do not mind if they get Irish stuff. They are leaving our stuff in the ground to buy it elsewhere. It has brought the price down. It does not make it worthwhile. We need leadership and we need somebody to take some strong decisions and make sure this happens.