Mr. Darragh Little:

I have a long list of questions. Deputy Ferris raised the issue of the representatives of the State needing a warrant to enter forestry lands and so on. From my reading of the Bill, it would appear that the State's representatives can enter lands but a warrant will be required to enter a private dwelling. They can go into a business premises and seize documents or computer records as they see fit to get to the bottom of whatever they are after.

Deputy Ferris also questioned what "may prescribe" means in terms of the replanting of the forest after clear-felling. While it states "may prescribe", what is prescribed is very specific and the Bill sets out species composition cultivation, species mix, landscaping issues and other matters. In the neighbouring jurisdiction, the UK, there are detailed prescriptions being put into reforestation sites, so much so that the amount of productive forestry has dropped dramatically from one generation of forestry to the second generation of forestry, the amount of open spaces within the forest and so on. While I do not have a major objection to that, I question giving the State the role of prescribing what is to be planted in the forest when a forest manager can do the same job equally as well. We would have a problem of over-regulation in that area.

The 20 year provision is written into the Bill. The State may come back 20 years after planting and find a problem with the mapping. A major issue in the sector is the issue of over-claims. The forest service and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are re-examining all their old files, going back 22 years in some places, looking at the old six inch maps, and because they have new mapping technologies and a new map, they may decide there was an over-claim and request the return of money 20 years later. That will mean a transfer of risk to the forest owner. In transferring risk to forest owners, the buyers of forest, for example will perceive a risk as they do not know if the area will be changed by the forestry service at some point in the future because they have a new technology for mapping or whatever. The owner needs to know that when he plants the land, that is the end of the story and he can move on. We cannot do that under the current regulations. That particular section of the Bill seems to enshrine the ability of the State to go back and check out anything, making discrepancies in the mapping the fault of the forest owner when the fault had arisen from the State's technology. That is a significant issue and we are trying to tackle it with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine but we are not getting anywhere. We need to put a limit on this. We need to know that when an application for an afforestation grant is successful, the owner having submitted the map which the State digitised, that should be the end of the story. At present, the Bill seems to enshrine the right of the State to go back and do whatever with the new technology, which is quite amazing.

The burdens on folios was raised by Senator Comiskey. The Bill envisages that the Minister will have the right to put a burden, a replanting obligation, on a folio. With the expected level of clear-felling and so on in the next decade, a significant level of effort will be required to try to make that happen in the Land Registry. The cost implications are very significant. I do not think they truly understand the potential workload they are letting themselves in for because when the replanting obligation has been fulfilled, the burden will have to be removed from the folio. It will be an enormous task. That is another major issue.

In the preamble to the Bill, it is stated that the proposed replanting order, which is a burden on the folio, is to help new forest owners see there is a replanting obligation on the folio. That issue can be solved by the contractual obligations on solicitors to check out the law on forestry, and that the land must be replanted. It does not need to be written on the folio, thereby creating the administrative burden that surrounds that.

I have been practising forestry for 20 years and one issue that comes up among farmers is whether they have to replant. When one tells them they have to replant, they are no longer interested. They do not want to get involved. The fact is that most of them will not bother to take land out of forestry because it is not economic to pull the stumps out and reseed the land and so on, but the fact is that once they replant, they must stick with forestry to the end of all time. That discourages many people to plant land. We see that as one of the main barriers to planting new land and to meeting the targets of 14,700 hectares in the programme for Government. This Bill was first mooted ten years ago and the sector went to the then Government asking for the removal of that provision, but it would appear that request was ignored. The original function of the replanting obligation was to prevent deforestation at a time when we had no forests back in the 1940s. That is no longer the case. We have 10.5% forest cover. People want to plant forests and it is not really necessary to ensure they always maintain forestry on that land.

Senator O'Keeffe raised the issue of over-regulation. In my view there is a serious lack of trust between the sector and the State, which is evident in the Bill. Our perception is that the State believes it must control those involved in the sector. Let me take felling licences as an example. That the Minister has the ability to amend, revoke or suspend a licence at his discretion without giving a good reason or even offering compensation is a step too far for the Irish Forestry and Forest Products Association. The other aspect of making it a criminal offence for a leak from a ministerially appointed committee is another step too far. If the Department wants the sector to co-operate, it needs to bring us into the room. We have not been consulted or asked to co-operate for many years. We perceive the Bill as the State setting out a menu of how it wants to control the sector at a critical stage in its development. The sector is trying to attract new investors and bring in new people.

In many cases, the sale of Coillte's timber rights has raised the profile of forestry in Ireland outside of Ireland. There is a huge amount of interest. A massive number of people are asking how they can get into this sector, about which they have heard so much. When they look at this draft Bill, they see fees and costs and ask what the hell is going on in this sector. They ask whether there is something inherently wrong with the sector which means it has to be controlled by legislation that contains such measures. This is a big problem for our sector. It sends the wrong message to people who might want to plant land and invest in the future of the sector. I refer not only to those who might buy forests, but also to those who might build saw mills and processing facilities or develop recreational facilities.

I note Deputy Penrose's observation about the forestry development authority. We see that as an area too. I did not include it in our submission because there has been a great deal of movement in this regard over the past 20 years. In other areas like fishing and the ports, the role of the development authority is to sift through policy proposals and make coherent observations for the attention of the Minister. We do not have that in forestry. Since the current forestry policy was developed 18 years ago, the target of having 17% forest cover by 2030 has been eroded left, right and centre. All sorts of regulations, for example, relating to the environment and to tax, have been introduced. We need to look at the policy in much more detail. The current policy is 20 years old. In that context, I would like to add something else to the menu for the forthcoming Bill. I know there are many confusing issues. We have the policy review group with Coillte, we have the Coillte-Bord na Móna issue, we have this Bill and we have a policy that is 20 years out of date. Legislation should be there to facilitate policy. One of the problems for this sector is that there is no coherent policy at the moment.

I am moving down through the list of questions. Deputy Penrose referred to the programme for Government ambition for "an annual 14,700 hectare afforestation programme". We are not able to reach that target by any stretch of the imagination. The reasons for that include the designation of land, the policy decisions made by the State and the policy decisions made by other parts of the Government, for example, with regard to tax clearance certificates. The regulation of forestry is much more stringent than the regulation of other parts of agriculture. These things are all narrowing availability of land for forestry and undermining the confidence of people. A stop-start approach has been taken to forestry over the past ten years. Grants have been stopped and got going again. The single farm payment has been an issue in the past year. Many farmers have decided not to do anything until that comes to pass. When something comes to pass and everything goes again, it stops again a couple of years later for some other reason. The lack of a multi-annual approach to forestry has been very damaging to the confidence of the sector. As a result, the extent of the planting programme has started to decrease and people have started to wonder what is going on and why there is no coherent policy.

I think I have covered everything I wanted to cover. Before I pass over to Mr. Pat Glennon, I would like to respond to what was said about the need for an aggressive afforestation policy. This brings me back to the point that we want to plant more land. Many people in Ireland want to plant more land. A great deal of land in Ireland is under-utilised and could be brought into productive forestry for the benefit of the landowner and of the State. We would love to be able to plant more trees on such land. We would love to have forests with multiple objectives, as opposed to single objective commercial forests. We are all in favour of other objectives such as recreation, the environment and biodiversity. The 12,000 jobs in this sector at present largely depend on the commercial sector. The recreational sector has not yet been developed. We would love to have a multi-use, multifaceted forestry sector.