Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on his organisation of Bród 93/23 last night. It was very impressive. There is a lot of feedback from some of the participants this morning. I was in the UK but want to acknowledge the significance of the Cathaoirleach's leadership in this area. When he was elected Cathaoirleach, he gave a commitment that equality, gay rights and so forth would be at the centre of his platform. True to his word, he has been a strong advocate for all of that and much more. I want to acknowledge that.

I spent the past two days in England at the invitation of Euroforest Ireland, which is a forestry organisation that is very active in Ireland and in the UK. It is clear from site visits yesterday, with both public and private forestry, and from visits to various forestry projects that there is a crisis in Britain but we also have a crisis here. It is clear from other Irish people on that trip that Irish forestry is in crisis. We have ash dieback all over the place. It is a national disaster in the UK. There are crews all over the place. We have to address it. I would like a debate on forestry with a specific focus on ash dieback and the challenges in terms of insurance.

I wish to compliment the Minister of State, Senator Pippa Hackett. For two years I have been calling for a meeting with the Social Economic Environmental Forestry Association, SEEFA. She has finally agreed to meet them at 12 noon today in Agriculture House. It has been a long battle to try to get private forestry stakeholders to the table. I will continue to advocate strongly for a level playing pitch for Coillte, State forestry projects and the private forestry sector, which makes a huge contribution and in which many of our pension plans are involved. We need a balanced debate about public and private forestry. We need a focused debate on the challenges around ash dieback and how we are going to deal with them. I ask that very early in the new year, the Leader might facilitate that.