Mr. Simon White:

I want to get across that we are the pioneers. We are the people who really got into this and who really understand it. We are the people with the knowledge. We are desperately understanding of the fact that we need to plant trees in this country. We need to look at every innovative way of doing so. We probably have a good idea as to how it should be done. There are lots of different species we should use. They are not being looked at. People need to sit down around a table and work out what needs to be done. This type of consultation process they set up of ticking a box because they talked to us, like Project Woodland, which is a complete and utter waste of time and money, is not good enough. We need to sit down. We need to be involved in designing these schemes because we are the ones who will make it work. That is the first thing I want to say.

The Deputy asked about the costs. We as an organisation are representing private forestry in Limerick and Tipperary. However, we found ourselves representing people with ash dieback all over Ireland because we are the only ones who came in with a voice. Therefore, I do not want to personalise it to us as to what our costs are. However, I could take a representative sample and say that somebody with a 25-year-old plantation who planted 20 acres of ash is looking at the moment of actual loss of €120,000 worth of tress. That is with 20 acres. If somebody had 10 acres, he or she is looking at €60,000 at that time. However, somebody who had a 30-year-old plantation is looking at probably double that as potential. I refer to the trees that would have been there.

You do not harvest them all in one go, as Mr. O'Connell explained. It is a business, and something to hand on.

Apart from the value of the trees, our land is worthless. You could not give it away to anybody because there is an obligation on it. One of the major problems is that we have made it so that once you plant trees, it is compulsory to do so. That is ridiculous and the Department has stuck to it like a fly to flypaper. It does not make sense because it is counterproductive. We know what we are like in Ireland in that if people are compelled to do something, they do not want to do it. Everybody knows that once someone goes into trees, the most efficient thing to do with that land is keep it in trees, but people have to have an out. If people cannot grow trees on their land, as we found when trees were planted on peatland and so on, and they cannot plant it again with anything that is going to give them anything back, they should be allowed to go back to a normal sort of production. It does not happen in any other sector so why should it happen with trees? It is holding people back from planting trees. It is counterproductive and does not make sense, yet the Department is sticking rigidly to it. It is a wrong premise. Anyone can see and understand that it is totally wrong and counterproductive. If the Department were to remove that requirement, it would make a huge difference to people in giving them confidence to get into forestry and grow something because they would have an out. There is no out and that is determining that the land that is planted is worthless because people cannot do anything else with it.