Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

I will try to elaborate further. It is not telling tales out of school to say we sought more money so we could introduce the necessary schemes. We did not get everything we wanted, but we got most of it. The €128 million we got was considered good in the context of the situation with which we must deal. Therefore, we had to prioritise. The priority was to put the funds into the planting end of the business — the Deputy should be happy with that — because of the need for a greater amount of timber for the economic and environmental reasons to which the Deputy has alluded, sequestration of emissions being but one of them. We also need a larger amount of timber to substitute for imports and for fuel.

With regard to fuel, there is now, more than ever, a market for thinnings, because of the wood pellet business and biomass yield and these provide revenue. The calculation we have made is that as a result of the growing market and demand for thinnings, this should help in providing a level of infrastructure to support the market. At the same time, we also need to increase plantings. We had to take a strategic decision. We hope and predict that the growing demand for thinnings will result in revenue that will help to offset the shortfall we have in the budget.

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