andMr. White asked the Minister for Fisheries and Forestry the efforts being made to sell our excess wood-pulp abroad in view of the lack of capacity available in the Irish timber processing industry.

Pending the development of outlets on the home market for increasing supplies of pulpwood which are becoming available from State forests, my Department have entered into an arrangement with an Irish company who are proposing to export a quantity of the excess material. This will enable my Department to continue to have forests thinned so that future production of good sawlog timber will be achieved.

The arrangement is, of course, short term. The Industrial Development Authority, in close consultation with my Department, are continuing their efforts to attract investment in new processing mills to utilise pulpwood at home.

Would the Minister agree that it is an undesirable practice to be exporting raw material when we should be processing it here?

The ideal thing would be to process that timber at home. When we have not the processing facilities to do that we are faced with the situation where it would cost us quite a considerable amount of money to thin the forests which must be thinned to allow the mature timber to grow. The arrangement we have entered into for a short-term period is one which enables us to gain a certain revenue and have someone else thin them for us and export them. It is not the ideal thing but it is the best we can do in the circumstances.

Is it correct that the country to which we are exporting this timber is Sweden?

I believe it is.

It is bringing coals to Newcastle.