Our policy with regard to forestry is completely unambitious and will entirely disappoint Fianna Fáil Deputies, but it is at least concrete. We think that there are about 200,000 acres of plantable land in the country. We have acquired about 30,000 acres of that, and we propose to acquire the balance at the rate of about 5,000 acres per annum. We have succeeded up to the present in acquiring about 4,000 acres per year, but we hope, with the additional powers given by the Forestry Act to acquire something like 5,000 per annum. Going at that rate, we would acquire something like 200,000 acres in about 40 years, but when we get more money next year or the year after— there is nothing to stop the Dáil, as Deputy Heffernan pointed out, putting more money at the disposal of the Forestry Branch—and have a clearer idea as a result of experience where suitable land is for forestry purposes, and have developed our nurseries, we can increase the acquisition of land after some time to 7,000 or 8,000 or 10,000 acres annually, and it is quite on the cards that we might be able to finish the programme in 25 or 30 years, which would be quite good.
I am asked what is the big idea behind this. It is that, so far as we have any information, there are about 200,000 acres of really suitable forestry land. Deputy Kilroy is wrong in saying that there are a million acres suitable for forestry in Mayo; there is not. He is thinking of land along the sea coast, which is poor land entirely unsheltered. It is much the same type of land as there is in Connemara. That is entirely unsuitable for forestry, and will never be planted, as far as we know now. There may be discoveries and possible new varieties that will settle that, but we do not know of them at present. Experiments were made in Connemara and have failed. There was an attempt made to plant areas along the sea coast on the best land we could get of this kind; of course there is no good land there. These experiments were a failure to a great extent, and we are not in a position at present to waste money upon propositions which were conclusively proved to be uneconomic. We believe, as I said, that there are about 200,000 acres of plantable land, and we propose to acquire that at the rate which I have indicated and to plant it. On the other side, about 200,000 acres of State-owned forests will produce about two-thirds of the total requirements of the country in soft woods. If we were in a position to produce two-thirds of our total requirements, we would be in a fairly sound position. The beauty of this programme, which I am quite sure Deputies opposite will not see, is that it is achievable. If in future years there is more money which can be spared for that purpose, the machinery is all there, the section is going, and it will be available, and we can speed up that programme. At present we consider ourselves lucky to acquire about 5,000 acres per annum.
I need not answer Deputy Moore's question. What he really wanted to know was whether we thought there should be any forestry in the country at all. I take it for granted that everyone would like to see increased planting. It would be a waste of time to go into all the reasons for increasing the forest area. I take it it is common ground on both sides of the House that it would be an advantage to increase the area. I need not labour the reasons—they have been given by several Deputies. I do not propose either to go into the question between soft and hard timbers except to say that, roughly speaking, Deputy Gorey is right. There is practically no price for hard timber. Nobody denies that there are uses to which it can be put. Deputies indicated these uses. At the same time, the fact is that there is practically no price for it. With the exception of ash and sycamore, there is a very poor price for hard timber. While there are uses for it, the price is bad. Furthermore, it takes very much better land to grow hard timber, and that is a serious consideration in this country, where we have much congestion; where the farms on the average are so small; and where you have a very small area of untenanted land left. So that we have to take into account, on one side, in thinking out our programme, that land is very valuable in this country; that a large section of the people have no other means of making a living but out of the land. That is a rather bad point of view, but the fact remains that it is so—that for a very large section of the community there is only one way of making a living, and that is to get a piece of land. Land will become increasingly valuable as estates are taken over and divided up, and we have to be very careful not to acquire land that is suitable for agricultural purposes. It ought to be obvious to anyone that it would be bad economics from the point of view of the individual or of the State to acquire land for forestry purposes which is suitable for agricultural purposes. For these reasons, we do not plant nearly as much hard timber as soft timber, but we do plant some—ash, beech, and so on. Moreover, there is a considerable amount of clm and other hard timber in the country at present—there is, in fact, nearly enough to meet the requirements of the country. But commercial considerations, with which the Forestry Branch have nothing to do, enter into the matter.
I have been asked by Deputy Moore what we did with the woods when we acquired them. To begin with, most of the woods we sell are woods we buy. We buy an area of land on which there is immature timber, and we sell that. We go into the open market in order to get the highest price. We could not possibly make a condition with a purchaser, say, in Tipperary, that this timber must be treated or used in the country. If we did, we would simply have to take a very much smaller price. The Dáil has never decided that the Forestry Branch should become a sort of economic grand council and take charge of national policy in that way. The Forestry Branch exists for the purpose of growing trees. They are concerned with the economics of forestry as such, but they are not concerned—that is the business of other Departments—with the use made of the trees afterwards. If the Forestry Branch took that into account, the Tariff Commission, the Department of Industry and Commerce, and other Departments, could be abolished. That is their function. The proper function of the Dáil is to decide a question like that, not in relation to a forestry estimate, but in relation to a tariff debate, or some other of the economic debates that arise out of the estimates I mentioned. The Forestry Branch, on the other hand, is performing its functions if it confines itself to acquiring land and growing timber in the largest possible quantities, having regard to the amount of money at its disposal. If there is a national policy definitely laid down by the Dáil and adopted by the Government that all the requirements of the country in the way of woodwork must be produced from native-grown timber, it is the business of the Minister to alter the policy of the Forestry Branch to coincide with that. But, until that decision is come to, the business of the Forestry Branch is to decide what are the most suitable trees that can be grown on the land they are likely to get, and to grow as many of them as possible at the smallest possible price. When it comes to selling, it is not the business of the branch to decide that there is not enough furniture and that there are not enough chairs and boats made in the country and that it is a condition that must be made with the buyers of trees from the Forestry Department that they must make them into chairs and furniture in the country. It is the business of the Forestry Department to get the highest possible price they can for the trees and to put it to an appropriation-in-aid of the Vote and use it again for the planting and growing of more trees. It is the business of the Dáil and the Government to decide whether chairs or furniture or boats made in the country should be made from the timber of trees that are grown here.
I have been asked a question as to why we do not produce the seedlings we require. We do not produce them all; we produce round about three-fourths of them, and our aim is, and it is an aim that we are carrying out, to increase our nurseries each year so that all the seedlings we require after a few years will be produced in the country. We realise it is quite sound, from every point of view, that our seedlings, as far as possible, should be produced in the country, and we are approaching that state of affairs.
A number of Deputies were concerned that their own counties were neglected and not included amongst those where land is purchased. With a modest forestry programme of acquiring about five thousand acres a year, it is not unlikely that certain counties, for some reason or other, will be for some years neglected, if you like, or that in certain counties no land will be bought for forestry purposes. The Forestry Branch has to buy land where it can get it and where it is suitable. Wicklow land is notoriously suitable for growing trees. There are lots of poor land which for special reasons is not suitable for agriculture, but is notoriously suitable for the growth of trees. If a proposition comes from Wicklow for the purchase of five or six or one thousand acres for the Forestry Branch, they cannot afford to say: "We have already four thousand, or five thousand or seventeen thousand acres there, and because we have we will not buy these." That would be bad business and would be a mixing up of their functions. The function of the Forestry Branch is to buy land where it is cheap and suitable, and in that matter they cannot afford to be provincial. They take into account first, that they are getting the land cheaply; secondly, that it is suitable for forestry; and thirdly, that it is not suitable for agricultural purposes; and they put these three considerations together and they deduce from them that the purchase of that land will be good value for the country as a whole, that the trees planted will do well and will make money which can be used elsewhere. It is because they approach the matter in that way that Donegal and Mayo—where there is not so much suitable land, where there is a tremendously keen demand for any middling land for the relief of congestion—have been neglected, if you like.
With regard to estates that were mentioned by Deputy Kilroy and others, I have not the particulars by me at the moment. I have not the list of the estates offered to the Forestry Branch, but I will undertake to see what has happened and whether the proposed deal has fallen through; and I shall do that also with regard to the Villiers-Stuart mentioned by Deputy Little. We must get areas of about three hundred acres in order to have them economic areas. We do not intend, and I do not think the Deputies were ever led to believe that we intended, to enter into vast schemes of afforestation such as are produced in countries like Czecho-Slovakia, where they buy up thousands and thousands of acres, and where they keep foresters and gangers and surveyors in charge of them. While Deputy Buckley's speech was quite interesting and while his statistics were, I am sure, quite correct with regard to Norway and Sweden and Czecho-Slovakia and other countries, they have really nothing to do with this question here.
Sweden has about fifty million acres of forest always renewing themselves. They do not do any planting. Probably there is a body in Stockholm, such as the Deputy mentioned, to control the growth of trees, but they have not to do any planting except experiments with new varieties. Anyway there is no comparison at all between the conditions in Sweden and in this country. Neither is there any comparison between the conditions in Germany and in this country.
I would like to see more afforestation in this country. From every point of view the country has been denuded of trees. Deputy Heffernan was right in saying that for the money expended on forestry a great amount of employment is not given, but it gives a fair amount. If you take into account not only the advantages it produces in giving a certain amount of employment, but from the point of view of producing material needed, and also from the scenic point of view, and from the point of view of the amenities of life, and of the tourists coming here, there is no doubt whatever about it forestry is a particular type of activity that I would like to see increased. But, again, it is a question of money. We could handle twice as much money as we have. We are not asking for an awful lot, but again we have to balance accounts, and we propose to ask ourselves whether we ought to wait or whether we ought to tax our people further this year for this special purpose. Deputy Wolfe was right in saying that you must have a long purse. He did not mean to suggest that a good dividend is not paid by forestry carried out by the State or by an individual. In fact, it does. What he suggested is that you have to wait for a relatively long time before you get a return. We have to take that into account when we consider what amount of money should be at the disposal of the Forestry Branch. We have to take into account that we want money for a lot of urgent purposes at the moment, and while we take into account that forestry has a variety of advantages in the way of giving employment, and in other directions, we have nevertheless to realise that for the money expended there is going to be little return for a long time, and we have to ask ourselves when there are many more urgent matters that require the expenditure of money if it is good business to go too deeply into forestry. I am hopeful that we will be able to increase this Vote in time to come. We have the advantage of having what is regarded as a rather exceptional forestry section. I hope we will be able to increase this Vote in time. I do not want to be misunderstood, but this is one of the few luxuries that I would like to see set going, if it is a luxury, and I would like to see money spent in that direction. I know what difference it makes in a country from a hundred points of view to have trees planted and forestry going on there. I use the word luxury advisedly in this sense, that it is a luxury as compared with other and more urgent things at the moment, but even if it is it is one of the few luxuries that I would like to see money spent on if we could afford it. At any rate, we cannot afford any more money for that purpose this year. We have enough money to acquire five thousand acres if we could get quite suitable land, but there is always difficulty about getting suitable land. Deputy Ryan mentioned the Forth mountain. It may surprise Deputy Ryan to know that there are about four times as many claimants for the available rights on the Forth mountain as there were before the Forestry Act was passed. We are faced with the position that there are a number of people coming forward now and, with the greatest punctuality, claims are put in the most magnificent style. Luckily we have compulsory powers and we propose to exercise them, but at the same time we must not ignore these.
No matter how frivolous they may prove to be they must be investigated. That takes a long time. We have the Act there now. It will be put into operation. That land is offered, and it is one of the places that is suitable for planting and unsuitable for anything else. There are places in Galway and other counties which are of the same kind. This year we will endeavour to purchase between 4,000 and 5,000 acres, and at the same time try to administer the Forestry Act, which is a very important one. We have to approach the question, not only from the point of view of the growing of trees but of preventing the wanton destruction of trees which are immature.