Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael)

I accept and understand where the Minister of State is coming from. I mentioned briefly one specific case for the reason of oversight. It is an obvious case in which Coillte was involved. It had a 150 year lease on almost 1,000 acres of prime forestry land since 1933 which would have taken it up to 2083. Unfortunately something was wrong because the lease was challenged by the private owner of those lands and it had to be broken. Coillte entered into a new agreement whereby it bought 400 acres of land at a cost of €3.7 million to the taxpayer and ended up giving back 500 acres of what was previously leased. It has the agreement of the landowner that it can harvest that land up to 2035 so there was some allowance back on those lands. This is the reason I seek an oversight role. Would Coillte have power to approve the purchase of those lands? I appreciate it is an agreement and is out of the court but would that require the approval of the Minister? The Minister of State did acknowledge that this is the place to ask the hard questions and I appreciate him saying that because too often hard questions are not answered, especially in Parliament. I do not expect an answer today but the Minister of State said he would come back to me with more detail and I accept that.

As regards an oversight role, I use this specific case as an example. Some €3.7 million, a substantial amount of money, was used to purchase lands which we already had on a long-term lease of 150 years and, due to inappropriate maintenance or whatever, the State was forced, though Coillte, to purchase these lands and give back almost half of the resource it had available to it. I hope the Minister of State understands where I am coming from. I have given a hard example of the reason oversight is important and the reason approval is required right up to the level of the Minister. That is why we are here. We are elected parliamentarians and should not give all the power to State agencies. We must have accountability and transparency right up to elected Members.