Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have two points based on my experience and that of most people I see around me. Farmers are planting their land. What we see is that a farmer with 100 acres decides to plant all of his land and so he or she ceases to farm. They give up farming their marginal and poor quality land as they can make more from the forestry grants than they will make from farming the land. That is the difficulty. They then move away and there is nobody left in the area. It is not an argument about whether forestry is good or bad, but the social and long-term consequences it has on the rural community. That is the argument I want examined.

In regard to employment generated by forestry, I see most of the work is on mounding land for forestry and the people who have digging machinery do this work, and there is a bit of work in thinning and maintaining the forestry, but if one divides the work over the length of time it takes this crop to grow and mature, it generates a very low level of employment. That is the reality.

Nobody is disputing these facts. The problem that people have is that forestry sterilises the landscape and it will never produce anything other than the trees. The trees require low level labour intensity. There are vast areas of the country, whole townlands where nobody lives anymore. That is the death knell of rural Ireland. We see that mass afforestation in my part of the country will cause significant problems. I accept all the positive arguments but the negative it has for the communities in which we live is the problem. What are we going to do about that problem? How can we ensure we can have other industries and other business that will maintain and sustain people to want to live and stay in these areas? Can there be other incentives put in place? There are significant incentives for people to plant land, yet there are few incentives for alternatives. That is the challenge presented by afforestation.