It will be agreed between us all that the national investment in forestry is very substantial. We have gradually, over the years, stepped up the annual acreage planted from between 20,000 to 25,000 acres. It is extremely important from the point of view of the nation that this very large capital expenditure should begin to pay off as soon as can be reasonably expected.
I want to know have the restrictions which applied to the export of timber in the round been removed? I understand that at some stage—I think it was during the war period—it was felt that the scarcity of timber was such that it was legitimate to provide, if any Irish industry required supplies of timber, that that type of timber would be restricted and one could not export it in the round unless it had been submitted to some processing in Ireland. So long as there was a world scarcity of timber that may have been a legitimate restriction to maintain but now I suggest to the Minister and to the House that the forestry enterprise is entitled to sell its products in the most profitable market it can find.
I do not care whether they sell the product in Ireland or abroad but I think it vitally important that when they have timber to advertise for sale they should be entitled to consider the tender of anybody whencesoever he may come, and to sell timber to the highest bidder because now, if our timber goes abroad, it is perfectly easy to purchase timber from abroad and bring it in if any manufacturer here requires timber for the purposes of his particular industry. We can never make the forestry enterprise a profit-earning one if we impose upon it a permanent obligation to sell its produce below current market prices.
There is another aspect of this general question that I think requires at least consideration. Most of the land on which forests can be planted and successfully reared to maturity are capable of alternative user in the complex of sheep production. One of the strong arguments always advanced by forestry men to press the claim of forestry against that of livestock has been that forestry would provide employment on a larger scale in any given area than sheep or other livestock using the land.
I want to direct the attention of the House to two aspects of that question. Keeping sheep does not end with driving them out on to the mountain in the summer and bringing them down to the lowland pastures in the winter months because, apart from the natural multiplication of the sheep themselves, there is now the whole vast industry of wool and our export of wool this year amounted to approximately £5,000,000 sterling. A great part of that wool came from the backs of horny, mountain sheep who would not be there at all if the mountain grazing were not available to maintain them during the summer months. Therefore, you have in the sheep industry not only a natural multiplication of the animals on the land but the consequential employment involved by fellmongering, wool sorting and by the sale and handling of wool and the various ancillary activities associated with sheep and their by-products. If, however, the case is firmly established that you can get as good or a better monetary return from the land by utilising it for timber and at the same time that you can provide more employment through the medium of forestry than you could through sheep grazing, I can see that a powerful argument is made for diverting certain sheep lands to forestry.
I notice with some alarm, however, that the expansion of forestry output does not mean a proportionate increase in the employment of men. We have now the tendency for—I have forgotten what the name is—inducement schemes or something of that kind which are designed to increase output and reduce employment measured in terms of men. It may mean that individual men can earn a bit more than they otherwise would but, from the point of view of families maintained in the area, the tendency now is for the number of wage earners to diminish while their individual output expands. In the light of that tendency, and the general potentialities of the sheep market, I think the whole matter should be kept under review because it is not a desirable thing to depopulate large parts of rural Ireland substituting trees for men if by an alternative user of the land we can maintain families in areas where they have traditionally lived and which we are concerned to preserve as populated areas. These are the two matters about which I am at the moment concerned.
The last matter I should like to mention is this. The annual rate of planting has increased very considerably over the last 12 or 15 years. To maintain a rate of from 20,000 to 25,000 acres—which Deputies should bear in mind is a scale of planting which we have only attained in recent times—it is necessary to retain a reserve of land strictly proportionate to the annual planting programme. Perhaps the Minister would remind me—is it customary that the reserve should be three years' supply?
