Mr. Simon White:

Forgive me, but the only way I can answer that is with my own supposition. One thing I do know is that nobody was consulted among the stakeholders on the ground. This was done by the Department of agriculture in consultation with the Department of Finance. This is a supposition, but I suspect they came up with a sum of money and tailored this scheme within that confined area. They knew they could not fix the job fully, so they have excluded large numbers of people, again to fit the scheme into the budget. Anything that would have expanded the budget was out of the question, but the awful thing about that is that they never took the exclusions into consideration because they did not discuss them with us.

They did not discuss with the forest companies that there are all these people for whom it cannot be done. I have asked the forestry companies in that room if they would go down to Waterford and then up to Cavan to take out 1 ha with their big machines. They will not do it. They are not interested. Then when it goes to the older plantations, I asked the companies if they would take that on and their answer is they would not. The reason for this is that it will cost them so much more money. They are in the business of making money. They know the farmers do not have the money. They cannot come up with the money to do it so it has to be provided by the State. There is €2,000 to be put against a job costing €7,000 per hectare so they are not going to take it on. Not only that but they know the risks are that there would be very large failure rates and that when they finish the job, the owners are then going to come back after them saying their crop is not what it should be and that it is supposed to be 90% at the end of it but it is not. The owners will say the companies are then liable and they do not want to take on that liability.

The Government put approximately €79 million into the scheme and the fact is that half of that will go back because it will not be spent. Even with that, the reality is that it is costing an awful lot more money, but it is very small amounts of money compared to the billions we are going to pay in fines if we do not plant trees. However, if it does not sort out ash dieback, as everybody in the forestry industry knows, people will not plant. It is not happening because it is not in their interests. The schemes need to be simplified. This is so complicated that it would banjax anybody to look at it and to work out how they were going to deal with this. It is just putting people off. Members will forgive me for this but I have to say it. It makes us wonder if there is a major effort to get private owners out of forestry. We seem to be run out of it. We see they way we are being treated and the likes of Gresham House and things like that are being fostered by the State agent, Coillte, and such like, to take over land from farmers. It is being taken over. It is like a land grab because these people are so demoralised. They see no future and they are actually being forced to sell their land. That is where this thing is going. Then the State is expected to give the sort of subsidies it should be giving to the rural community to these big entities and that money will go out of the country. We need to work with our rural communities. We need to hold Ireland together. We cannot all move to the cities. If we do, we will have nothing. What will our tourist industry be? If you do not manage the farmland and forestry, what are you going to have? You are going to have secondary succession. The country will be in a mess. We saw what happened in the Burren when they decided the Government was not going to do this. We need to foster the management and the best people to do it are the landowners at the moment. We are being driven out of business by this.