Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 19 June 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Disposal of State Assets and Quarterly Review: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform

6:25 pm

Photo of Brendan HowlinBrendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, from the very outset of this process, I indicated in all my parliamentary questions that all the various broad ranges of issues would be considered in respect of the sale of the harvesting rights of trees in Coillte, including, for example, ensuring public access, amenity, the impact on existing contracts with sawmills and so on. It was necessary to assign an economic value, if one was going to insist that certain woodlands would not be open for sale at all, that access had to be guaranteed or that there would be replanting. As all these things were part of the process, it was not, as the Deputy has described, a financial analysis alone. Were I on the other side of the House, I could easily get into an emotional argument about selling trees, as though I were selling the forests. However, that never was intended and I believe Deputy Donnelly knows that. Ideologically, I never had any great difficulty or understood a great difference between selling upfront the trees in advance or selling them post facto when they are grown, which is what they are being grown for, as long as all the other bits of the equation are nailed down, that is, the public access, the amenity, the replanting and all that. When the Government joined all the dots, it did not recommend itself as an economic prospect for the Government to advance and well and good. No more than I have an ideological disposition towards not being opposed to the sale of trees, I do not have an ideological disposition towards thinking the Government must sell them even if it does not make sense. It is purely pragmatic, based on what is in the best interests of the State right now, which needs money to invest in jobs. The 350,000 or 400,000 people who seek jobs right now want answers and want the Government to be vigorous in its search for answers for them.

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