REPORT OF DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE ON IRISH FORESTRY. 3 1 



really competent permanent head official as a branch of the 

 Department, and to leave him unhampered and unhindered by 

 the alterations of policy inseparably connected with a changeable 

 Advisory Committee. 



The Commissioners then proceed to explain the duties of the 

 Forestry Section, both as regards the management of existing 

 State forest lands and the acquisition of others, and the means 

 to be taken to encourage private owners to grow and properly 

 manage woodlands ; and they advise that the Section be 

 granted power to acquire suitable lands and to purchase 

 grazing rights. They recommend that the smaller woods 

 should be managed by the County Councils through their 

 surveyors and staff. It would take too long to explain 

 fully all the details of this rather complicated scheme, and 

 all that can be hoped is that misgivings as to its success will 

 be falsified if it is ever put into action. The simple plan 

 of a Government Forestry Department with its own staff, 

 managing, as in France and elsewhere, all the public forests 

 as State Reserves, under the general supervision of the 

 Department of Agriculture, would seem more likely to succeed. 

 Of course it would work in constant communication with the 

 County Councils. Communal forests in France have not been 

 everywhere managed without political trouble, owing to right- 

 holders being often important persons at election time, and it 

 may be foreseen that political exigencies and political strife 

 in Ireland may prevent that proper continuity of management 

 that is an absolute sine qud non for permanently successful 

 forestry. 



Part VI. draws attention to the present lack of organisation 

 in the Irish timber industry, there being no systematic business 

 management either applied to the woodlands or to the methods 

 of utilisation of material cut. The Commissioners comment 

 on the fact that only a small portion of the timber cut is 

 sawn, and even that which is sawn up is treated in primitive 

 machinery, involving much waste and an absence of proper 

 grading of the scantlings produced. The remarks on this 

 subject, too long to quote, are most interesting, and the 

 remedy suggested is the introduction of technical knowledge 

 and skill, together with a proper co-operation between all the 

 parties interested — the State, the owners of woodlands, and 

 the proprietors of wood-working industries. 



