Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I will put it this way. There are ill-informed people out there being negative about forestry, including some people who consider themselves leading scientists who talk about peaty soils, and they not knowing one end of a bog from the other in many circumstances. If I could convince those people to see common sense, they would understand it is a lot better for us to grow trees in Ireland rather than import them from Scotland or anywhere else. We should put the money into farmers' pockets here, put the money into our sawmills, give the money to our hauliers and to people like Donncha Twomey and other contractors who have harvesters and forwarders, and to those families steeped in the tradition of working in timber. If I could convince some of those negative people to understand it is better to use our own timber than to import it, I would not be long hitting the target of 8,000 ha, because we were doing it. As I said before about my brother in here, when we were up sodding on two machines we were doing 8,000 ha per year. If we did it before we can do it again.