I move:
That a sum not exceeding £1,748,700 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1961, for Salaries and Expenses in connection with Forestry (No. 13 of 1946 and No. 6 of 1956), including a Grant-in-Aid for Acquisition of Land.
The net Estimate shows an increase of £570,570 over the 1959/60 net Estimate figure as shown in the printed volume of Estimates. When allowance has been made for a Supplementary Estimate of £90,250 for 1959/60 which was passed by the Dáil in March but then too late for inclusion in the 1960/61 Estimate volume the net increase for which allowance is made in the Estimate now before the House is £480,320. The increases on individual subheads as shown in the Estimate volume, that is, not allowing for the effect of the Supplementary Estimate, are as follows:—
|
£ |
|
|
Subhead C.2—Forest Development and Management |
504,550 |
|
Subheads A and B—Salaries, Wages, Allowances and Travelling Expenses |
68,480 |
|
Subhead C.1—Acquisition of Land |
15,000 |
|
Subhead D.—Grants for Afforestation purposes |
10,000 |
|
Other Expenditure Subheads (net) |
5,040 |
These figures account for an increase of £603,070 in the gross estimate. The increase in the net estimate is reduced by allowance for a rise of £32,500 in Appropriations-in-Aid under Subhead H.
The Subheads upon which Deputies will particularly desire information are, Subhead C.1—Acquisition of Land, Subhead C.2—Forest Development and Management, Subhead H—Appropriations-in-Aid and Subhead D—Grants for Afforestation purposes. Before dealing in detail with these Subheads I propose to refer briefly to the remaining subheads of the Vote.
Subhead A—Salaries, Wages and Allowances—shows an increase of £48,480 on the original provision for 1959/60. The rise in requirements is due mainly to increases in the indoor and outdoor staff employed on land acquisition work, minor other additions to the inspectorate and additional forester staff together with the usual allowances for incremental increases and allowance for the recent Civil Service salary adjustments.
Subhead B—Travelling Expenses— is higher by £20,000 than the original provision in 1959/60. The steady expansion in the total area of forest land and the concurrent increase in the number of field staff employed involves an inevitable rise in the annual rate of expenditure on travelling expenses. Insufficient allowance was in fact made for travelling expenses in the Estimate for 1959/60 and an additional £9,000 had to be provided under that head in the Supplementary Estimate 1959/60. The Estimate now before the House allows for a further rise of £11,000 in 1960/61.
Subhead E.1—Forestry Education— shows an increase of £4,740 over the original Estimate provision for 1959/60. The increase arises partly on the salaries portion of the subhead but allowance has been made also for an increase in the number of students undergoing a course of training. In the school year 1960/61 it is expected that there will be the record number of 95 trainees undergoing instruction.
Under Subhead F—Agency, Advisory and Special Services—the provision has been increased by £1,300. The main charge arising on this subhead at present is the payment of fees to a firm of industrial consultants. When the Estimate for 1959/60 was being prepared it was not clear for how long it would be necessary to continue the services of the consultants and an additional provision had to be made in the Supplementary Estimate for that year. Allowance is made also for the employment for some months of a consulting engineer on road construction questions.
Subhead G—Incidental Expenses— shows a decrease of £2,600. There are minor variations, up and down, within the subhead but none of them is significant.
Turning now to Subhead C.1— Acquisition of Land—it will be noted that the provision made at £185,000 is higher by £15,000 than the provision in the 1959/60 Estimate. The balance in the Land Acquisition Grant-in-Aid Fund at the 31st March, 1960, which was estimated at £56,000 according to the note appended to the printed Estimate, in fact proved to be somewhat higher at a figure of slightly over £74,000. With a new grant of £185,000 there will, therefore, be a total of slightly over £259,000 available for the acquisition of land in the current year.
Last year a total area of 27,052 acres was acquired in 346 property deals. The approximate plantable content of the lands acquired during the year was 24,000 acres. Final computations are still outstanding in relation to the extent to which areas classified formerly as unplantable were included in the planting programme for 1959/60 and data in relation to the extent to which former woodland was cleared during the year for replanting is also still incomplete. I am, therefore, unable to give the House at this stage a definite figure as to the extent of the plantable reserve held by the Forestry Division at the 1st April, 1960. It is not, however, expected to differ substantially from the reserve position 12 months previously, that is, a total of 57,500 acres of which some 9,000 acres were not immediately available for planting for various reasons, leaving an effective reserve of 48,500 acres.
Although the total number of property transactions brought to completion in the year was slightly higher in 1959/60 than in the previous year the total acreage acquired was lower. My predecessor dealt extensively with this question in introducing the Forestry Estimate for 1959/60 in the House and mentioned various measures which were being taken with a view to increasing the intake of land and thereby improving the plantable reserve position. The various measures to which he referred contributed to an acceleration of the handling of acquisition cases within the year although their effects were not apparent in the statistics of cases brought to fruition by the close of the year. The acquisition of land target for 1960/61 can, however, be set at a higher level in consequence of these various improvements in arrangements. If a higher target is achieved the main gain will have come from an enlargement in the staff dealing with this work so as to secure a more expeditious handling of acquisition proceedings at all stages. A hastening in the average time required to put a case through to finality will come from some procedural changes recently adopted in relation to the treatment of equities.
Since the promulgation last year of the Statutory Regulations under the 1956 Forestry Act it has been possible to make some progress with the difficult commonage areas, the acquisition of which the Act was designed to facilitate. The first case, a commonage area of 72 acres in Donegal, has just been brought formally before the Land Commission under the new procedure. Another, a substantially larger commonage area, has now been brought almost to the point where the formal procedure can also be initiated.
In the other type of case—one where serious title difficulties have arisen— with which the 1956 Forestry Act and the new Statutory Regulations dealt, some progress has also been made and the first formal proceedings will shortly be instituted.
I should mention before passing from subhead C.1 that last year we were successful in acquiring two blocks of land, one in Wexford and one in Waterford, suitable for the new large-scale nurseries which the Department is anxious to establish. Negotiations for other areas are being pursued actively and further progress with the establishment of new big nursery units is expected during the present year.
Subhead C.2—Forest Development and Management—shows an increase of £504,550 over the original Estimate provision for 1959/60. In the Supplementary Estimate for that year an additional sum of £137,000 had to be provided under this subhead and the increase in the current year as compared with the revised Estimate for 1959/60 is, therefore, £367,550.
From the details given in Part III of the Estimate now before the House Deputies will see that the main increases as compared with the original Estimate figures for 1959/60 are on Head 3 of the subhead, that dealing with new roads and buildings, which is up by £184,500, and on Head 4— General Forest Management—which is up by £208,000. On Head 3 an additional £40,000 was provided in the Supplementary Estimate and the increase over the revised Estimate figure for that head is, therefore, £144,500. On Head 4 an additional £100,000 was provided in the Supplementary Estimate and the increase this year over the revised 1959/60 figure is, therefore, £108,000.
Taking the Subhead item by item: item 1—State Forest Nurseries—shows no significant change as compared with 1959/60. The provision includes a sum of £131,653 for labour compared with an actual expenditure in 1959/60 of £122,269.
In dealing with item 2, Establishment of Plantations, I must first draw the attention of the House to the fact that a total area of just over 25,000 acres was planted in 1959/60. It will be recalled that in recent years the Forestry Division has been working to a plan of progressive annual increases in the rate of planting which was designed to reach an ultimate level of 25,000 acres in 1959/60. That target was duly reached and it is intended to plant a further 25,000 acres in the current year. It is, I think, very creditable to the Forestry Division and I wish to thank all concerned, that the planned progression of annual planting rates was maintained and brought to its ultimate peak last year despite all the management difficulties associated with the paucity of the plantable reserve available. The comparatively low level of the plantable reserve in relation to annual planting rate has, of course, made it impossible for the Division to organise planting programmes at individual forest centres in the manner best calculated to bring about stability in labour force requirements. These difficulties will persist in 1960/61, but, if, as I hope, there is a substantial improvement in the rate of acquisition of land this year, we should be able to look forward to an improvement in the position of the plantable reserve and a reduction in our management problems as from 1961/62 onwards.
In the course of last year's Estimate debate, attention was directed to the increasing extent to which the planting programme is situated in the counties along the western seaboard. In 1959/60, 10,270 acres, 40 per cent. of the total planting programme, was located at forests in the Congested Districts and present indications are that some 41 per cent. of this year's programme will also lie in the congested districts. A substantial part of the planting programme in western areas is in peat soils. Progress on plantations already laid down on western peats continues to be encouraging although, of course, a final decision in relation to some of the more difficult peat soil types, upon which afforestation has been attempted, must still be deferred for quite some time. I should say in this connection that the Forestry Division's research unit has been devoting a considerable amount of its efforts towards scientifically controlled research work on these peat areas including experiments in relation to species selection, manurial applications and plant spacings.
The westward swing in planting in recent years has, of course, been accompanied by an increased reliance on mechanical preparation of ground which is essential in the peat areas and is generally regarded as an aid to successful crop establishment on most soil types with which we are today concerned. In 1956/57 mechanical preparation preceded planting on 36 per cent. of total area planted, 47 per cent. was mechanically prepared in 1957/58 and 51 per cent. in 1958/ 59. In 1959/60 a total of 15,700 acres, 61 per cent. of the entire planting programme, was mechanically prepared and in the current year it is expected that some 18,000 acres, almost 70 per cent. of the entire programme, will be so prepared. This increase in the extent to which ground is prepared by mechanical means is a good thing in so far as mechanical preparation either improves the prospective timber yield or renders plantable areas upon which forestry could not otherwise be attempted. It has, however, a limiting effect on the volume of immediate employment provided by new plantings. I shall refer later to this aspect of the matter when dealing with labour questions generally.
The sum provided for Labour under the Establishment of Plantations head is £414,020 compared with an actual expenditure of £388,740 last year.
On item 3, New Roads and Buildings, a provision of £528,500 is being made against a provision in the 1959/60 original Estimate of £344,000. Only slightly over £20,000 of the provision relates to Buildings and allowance is, therefore, being made for an expenditure of over £500,000 in 1960/ 61 on the construction of roads and bridges. Some years ago when the acreage of plantations approaching the thinning stage began to mount up rapidly there was a developing arrear in the construction of forest roads required for the extraction of thinning produce. Construction was slow and progress was impeded also by organisational and other difficulties in a rapidly enlarging volume of work which had special characteristics. The extent of the progress which has been made in setting aside the difficulties and in speeding up the work is evident from the following figures showing the mileage of roads completed in each of the past four years and the programme for the current year: 1956/57, 71 miles; 1957/58, 123 miles; 1958/59, 106 miles; 1959/60, 200 miles (a provisional figure); 1960/61, approaching 300 miles.
With this very rapid acceleration the position in relation to the servicing of forest properties with extraction roads has improved very substantially. During the past year when favourable summer weather conditions permitted of remarkably quick progress, most of the remaining difficult areas were handlled and indications are that work planned for the present year should bring the position on the extraction road front generally up to date, thus enabling attention in future years to be devoted rather more to improving the servicing of young plantations with roads useful for general management and fire protection purposes.
The rapid progress which has been made is attributable in large measure to new methods of road construction adopted on the advice of a consulting engineer with considerable experience of forest and other pioneering road construction work abroad. The consultant was first engaged for a brief period some years ago and was reemployed last year for a 6-month period. We have been fortunate enough to secure his services again for a short period in the current year but at this stage he is mainly concerned with bridge construction problems.
The adoption of a new methods, apart from enabling progress to be accelerated, has also brought about a significant reduction in the construction cost of forest roads in many areas. This reduction in cost will have a significant bearing on the final economics of forestry as the capital costs of road construction in the early stages of the rotation have a considerable impact upon the final Profit and Loss Account for timber production.
The provision for Road Construction this year includes £309,990 for labour as compared with £186,073 actual expenditure last year. The direct labour element in forest road construction on the scale now in progress is, therefore, quite considerable despite the significant diversion of labour into the indirect employment category which has followed from the more extensive letting out of contracts for the supply of road materials in recent years. The cost reduction from the adoption of new construction methods to which I have referred has reduced the "on site" labour content of the work and has thus limited the growth in direct employment from an enlarging total volume of work but the new methods have had no significant effect on the indirect labour content, the growth of which over the past few years may be gauged from the following figures in relation to contract expenditure on the supply of materials for roads and bridges: 1958/59, £62,250; 1959/60, £137,641; 1960/61, £177,000, estimated.
The Estimate provision for 1960/61 under the item of General Forest Management shows an increase of £208,000 over the original Estimate figure for 1959/60. In the Supplementary Estimate for that year, however, an additional £100,000 was added to the provision under this head and in the final outturn expenditure proved even higher at a level of £640,000. At that level the expenditure, which under this head is almost entirely on labour, was some £95,000 higher than in 1958/59. The very big increase in expenditure in 1959/60 in comparison with the previous year is partly due to the effect on work progress in the forests of the wet summer in 1958/59 in contrast with the unusually dry summer in 1959/60. A further rise in expenditure is anticipated in the current year. A pattern of regular annual increases in expenditure under this head is to be expected with the increase in the total area of the State plantations; the increase has been all the greater in recent years because of the considerable additions to the total area of young plantations, management expenditure requirements being higher in the first few years after planting.
To some extent the rapid rise in expenditure under this head has been influenced by a deliberate policy of stepping up general forest management work to the maximum extent possible to enable the rise in labour productivity associated with the introduction of the incentive bonus scheme to be taken up without creating disemployment in the period pending a normal expansion in total work volume. I am happy to be able to say that, as a corollary to this, reports show generally that the management and maintenance of the State forest plantations are now at a high level which should result ultimately in higher timber yields and contribute towards a reduction in danger of damage from fire and trespass.
I have already mentioned the high labour content of operations under this head. The provision for 1960/61 includes £701,977 for labour as compared with an actual expenditure in 1959/60 of £602,371.
Under item 5—Timber Conversion —the provision in the current Estimate is £100,000 compared with £94,500 in the Estimate for 1959/60. As regards thinning produce, up to 75 per cent. by volume has in recent years been sold standing in the woods and on a contract basis under which the purchaser does his own felling. The areas in which the Department still fells the timber before sale are usually those being thinned for the first time or where there are unusual felling problems; in such cases sales standing may be either unattractive to prospective purchasers or inadvisable from the Department's viewpoint.
Final figures of thinning output in 1959/60 are not yet available—partly because of a change-over to new methods of compiling returns which are expected to give a more accurate picture. Such information as is available suggests some increase on the 1958/59 figure of 2.3 million cubic feet with the probability of a further rise in 1960/61.
For the direct labour work to be charged to this head provision has been included in the Estimate at a figure of £88,440 as compared with an expenditure of £79,978 in 1959/60.
Under item 6 of Subhead C.2, that for Mechanical Equipment for Forest Development and Management, there is an increase of £13,400 in the provision for purchase and hire of mechanical equipment and vehicles and an increase of £27,850 in the provision for operation, maintenance and repair. The increases in both heads are directly related to the rise in the extent to which it is desirable to prepare ground mechanically before planting and also to the expanded level of road construction work.
The total sum included for labour in the various provisions within Subhead C.2 amounts to £1,705,940 which must be compared with an allowance for labour within the subhead in the 1959/60 Estimate of £1,352,114. The need for the Supplementary Estimate in 1959/60 arose in substantial measure from labour expenditure running above the level originally anticipated and the actual outturn of expenditure on labour on Subhead C.2 in 1959/60 was slightly over £1,437,000. The 1960/61 Estimate, therefore, allows for labour expenditure on this subhead exceeding the expenditure level in 1959/60 by approximately £268,000. The increase is partly attributable to the fact that there are 53 pay-days in 1960/61 but, even apart from the extra pay-day, allowance has been made for expenditure at a level approximately £240,000 higher than in 1959/60. An increase in the basic rate of wages for forestry labourers which operated from the 2nd January, 1960, and, therefore, had only partial effect on the level of expenditure in 1959/60 is contributing towards the higher wage bill anticipated in the current year.
The average number of men employed in 1959/60 was 4,779, an increase of slightly over 100 above the average level in 1958/59. The higher level of employment last year was gratifying when regard is had to the substantial extent to which the incentive bonus scheme for forestry labourers was introduced within the year and to the lower labour content of planting on mechanically prepared ground. Employment was in fact somewhat higher than it would otherwise have been because of the remarkably fine summer and the opportunities it presented for rapid progress with certain aspects of work. It seems unlikely that it will be possible to maintain employment at the enhanced 1959/60 rate in the current year but employment is expected to run above the 1958/59 level at an approximate average of 4,700 men.
Substantial progress has been made during the past year with the application of the incentive bonus scheme for forestry workers. On the 1st April, 1959, approximately one-seventh of the total labour force were working under the incentive scheme at the 29 forests to which the scheme had by then been applied. At the 1st April, 1960, two-thirds of the total labour force had been brought under the scheme at 112 forests. Application is proceeding at a rapid rate and it is anticipated that the scheme will have been applied to all forests by December, 1960.
I cannot say that I am an enthusiastic disciple of work study and incentive bonus systems of payment as likely to serve the interests of employers and employees alike in all circumstances but I must say that the forestry incentive scheme has at this stage proved itself a success. The application of fair and uniform incentive conditions to the wide range of field operations being carried on at so many forests spread over the country was a very big task and the firm of industrial consultants who undertook the assignment and the Department's staff had to face many problems of rationalisation of work patterns and specifications to ensure that the scheme would work properly. Most of the difficulties have by now been surmounted and a uniform basis for work evaluation at all forests has been settled.
The response of the workers to the scheme has been good and they have shown confidence in its fairness which has reflected itself in an appreciable rise in productivity. The pattern varies somewhat from forest to forest but all the reports I have received have indicated that the reaction of the workers to this form of indirect profit-sharing incentive has been to apply themselves intelligently to finding ways and means of husbanding time and securing a greater work production from their efforts. It is from this more thrifty use of time rather than from an increased tempo of physical exertion that the real gains of such a scheme can be secured for both employee and employer. I am told generally that where the scheme is in operation there has been a positive improvement in the quality of work as well as an increase in quantitative production.
I touched already in dealing with the General Forest Management head on the extra attention which it has been possible to pay to that work in consequence of the incentive bonus scheme. In general it is true to say that the scheme has enabled the standards of maintenance and management of State Forests to be stepped up in a way which should have an ultimate effect on net average timber yields per acre.
The main gain, of course, from the Department's point of view, lies in the sharing between the Department and its workers of the profits coming from a higher productivity level. The gain to the Department or, if I may put it that way, to the taxpayer in the current year is estimated at a net figure of approximately £220,000 and should be higher still when the scheme is fully bedded down. A gain of this magnitude is, of course, of very great importance in contributing to the ultimate financial soundness of Forestry as an aspect of the national economy. Forestry has obvious social advantages but in line with the Government's general approach to the fundamental problems of our economy it is essential that the State forest service which is now engaged on such an extensive scheme of afforestation should operate profitably. In pursuing afforestation at a level beyond that required to meet the domestic market for timber and other forest products it has been reassuring to us in the past that the British market in these commodities would never be substantially supplied from internal sources in Britain and would, therefore, be readily available to this country when our forests came into full bearing. In this, as in other fields, we must now take serious cognisance of the breaking down of international trade barriers which have in the past given us a measure of protection on the British market. It becomes all the more important to us to put our forest economy on the soundest possible footing if the considerable investment of public capital in afforestation is to prove well spent.
The labour content of Forestry is high and the attainment of optimum labour productivity which should be secured from the continued success of the incentive bonus scheme is essential if we are to be in a position to continue to look to forestry as a worthwhile branch of our economy and to develop its future employment possibilities to the maximum advantage. The scheme is succeeding in achieving these objectives. The biggest difficulty has been that of avoiding a temporary fall-off in the level of employment in consequence of the rise in productivity pending the natural enlargement in work volume which will come from the development of the plantations already laid down. It has been something of a headache to the officers of my Department to make sure that there would not be such a temporary fall-off in the employment level. Up to the present that danger has been successfully avoided and it now seems reasonably certain that it will be possible to maintain the labour force at its present level over the next few years. Within a few years the natural increase in the volume of work will bring us to the point where a steady upward movement in forestry employment will be possible with much greater assurance than in the past that the employment will be steady and permanent.