The Deputy is wrong. I said the number was about the same. In connection with the coming year, we expect employment to be about the same in respect of direct employment by the Department and that there will be increased thinnings and a larger road construction programme, so there will be an increase of employment in forestry in general as between the Department and private contractors. I thought I should make that clear, so that people would understand the general position.
Over the next five years, no matter who the Minister in charge may be and no matter what scheme is used for payment of men, the employment picture will be slightly flattening out. Assuming that we continue to plant 25,000 acres a year, having reached that target next year, it is simply then a matter of the way the forests grow and the work to be undertaken on them. In the five years after the next five years, there will be a sharper rise in employment; and five years beyond that, the employment will start rising even more rapidly. That is simply a matter of the operations involved in forestry. The forests have to grow before employment can be given on various operations. I hope that we will be able to secure more employment indirectly through the private forestry programme in order to supplement the total employment in the Department.
There were several observations about the price of land. I have investigated this matter and, so far as I can see, over a period of nearly two years back, the total acreage of parcels in respect of which negotiations broke down because of price, was less than 10 per cent. of the total area on which price negotiations were initiated in the same period. I do not believe that the price we pay has any great influence on the amount we can take. A good deal of the land is of poor quality from the standpoint of sheep. Taking the categories of land which we acquire, we make allowance as far as we can for the change in the value of money and in the value of land. My own belief is that, if we were to go beyond the present maximum price we pay, we would be starting to invade on sheep ground; and I do not believe in doing that.
A number of Deputies mentioned the delays in dealing with acquisitions. We are acquiring more staff for that purpose, in order to reduce the bottleneck between the time the land is offered and the time the negotiations are completed. I should add that usually there are considerable delays between the time the price is agreed and the time the land is taken over, which are due to arranging matters of title. Sometimes these are the responsibility not of the Department but to a very considerable extent of the seller's solicitor.
One Deputy suggested we should encourage offers of land in isolated districts. Quite obviously, the more forests grow in number the less there will be in isolated areas. We certainly would like to encourage offers of lands in areas which might appear to be isolated from the nearest forest. If it is impossible to take a particular parcel of land immediately, the chances are that other owners will have land close by and in that way we will be able to develop a satisfactory forestry centre.
In any event, we are taking a more elastic attitude towards that now, because of the necessity to acquire land more rapidly. The rules and forms required for the regulations in the Forestry Act, 1956, for dealing with commonage have been drafted, but I understand some further consultation is necessary. I also understand that the Incorporated Law Society must be consulted on a question of negotiation with the claimants to title in commonage and it is quite a complicated legal matter. We are doing our best to settle it as rapidly as possible.
Deputy Dillon and Deputy Blowick referred to the problem of developing a market for thinnings. Deputy Blowick stated he had submitted proposals to the previous Government to set up a State board to enter into the market for woodpulp products. When I became Minister, I found the whole question of the proper development of pulp market had been under consideration for quite some time, but no progress had been made, in the sense that no final decision had been taken as to whether to have a pulp factory or what action to take. It is vitally important to the economic running of forestry in this country that we should have efficient industrial utilisation of forest products, including small-sized material.
There are several firms already active in the pulp field, a good number of which are independent Irish firms. It was obvious that the first step necessary was to put the information available to the Government as to increasing availability of forest products over the next ten years or so before existing paper and pulp industries and ask those industries to produce a blueprint for a properly conducted development of industrial potential based on what they themselves were prepared to do. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has established a committee to go into that with the Industrial Development Authority. The various firms that process woodpulp are on the committee and the committee is preparing a report which is not yet available, and until we have made a full study of the report, it would be premature for me to say more.
I agree with all the Deputies who say it is tremendously important that we should have as high a price as possible for our forest products and that we should not get ourselves into the position where we might be forced to accept an excessively low price through the operation of any group within the community.
