Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman. I am not a member of the committee but I am very glad to be able to come here to put a couple of questions to Ms Gray. I know her from her previous work as chair of EirGrid. I cannot think of a better person to take on the role at Coillte. Her record and the work I have seen her do for the State are exemplary. The way she managed EirGrid and other companies, her ongoing work with the GAA and other bodies and her roots in Longford suggest we are very lucky to have someone of her calibre who is willing and able to take on the role in Coillte. We are at a point of complete and utter change for the company. It is important that five of us here are on the climate action committee, which has done some very good work, in particular on land use. The narrative of pestilence is out there and that the climate will be a disaster for Irish agriculture and land use, whereas it is the exact opposite. It is opening up a new opportunity in how we manage our land. We have to be strategic by having a land use plan and by working out what type of forestry is needed and where, what type of wetlands are needed and where, what type of biodiversity protection we need and where, and what type of farming we need and where. That is not to be prescriptive at farm level but about optimising our carbon storage, the protection of biodiversity, the creation of rural amenities, the management of water quality and the management of flood protection, all of which were referred to in Ms Gray's opening address. What I would love Ms Gray to do with Coillte, however, is to transform it completely and to redirect the company. That is what is needed.

It is true, as Ms Gray said, that Coillte is now in a very good financial position, having emerged from a difficult period. Matters have been rectified. A great deal of consolidation has taken place and the company has shrunk in many ways. Since it was established, Coillte has had a history of engaging in a certain type of commercial forestry and a certain type of commercial use of products. All of that has to change because of climate change. It must be change for the better. It is not a negative or to disrespect what has gone before. That had a real role and was beneficial for the country in many ways. However, we need Coillte to do a hell of a lot more now. As colleagues have said, it is around a completely different vision of forestry, in particular in different parts of the country. I understand that the characteristics of the north and west of the country are very different from those of the south and east. We may well need different forestry policies for different climate reasons. We face drought in the east and excessive storms and rain in the north and west. On the forests we are looking for, the opposition in Leitrim and Roscommon is genuine, real and reasonable. We cannot achieve the level of afforestation we will need with the current forestry model. We cannot black out large parts of Ireland with dense, single species, clear-felled forestry. We must move to continuous cover and create what are almost parklands rather than forestry plantations per se. In doing that, we can achieve all of those objectives around having a forest that is a joy to walk in. These are forests that promote rich biodiversity, maintain water quality and do not, in the clear-felling process, create water problems such as those we have had.

The first key message is that Coillte will get support in the Oireachtas for a complete change in the company's mandate to recognise this reality. Certainly, that exists in our cross-party report. We will support a complete redefinition of what we are searching for in our national forestry plantation system. We will have to match that with new incentives and new financing mechanisms. While I am confident we will be able to do so, Coillte must step up to the plate urgently and at huge scale. We need to go to something like 20,000 ha per annum. We need long-term thinking because forestry like this is an 80 to 100-year project. That is the way we need to go and Coillte will get political support if it agrees. It will match what is happening and best practice in European forestry and it will require a school of new foresters who are superb in their management. It is very employment-dense in the most rural parts of Ireland, which is one of the real prizes. There is a huge opportunity also for our two State companies with large landbanks, Coillte and Bord na Móna, to be involved centrally in rural transformation. We want community energy. I see Coillte as a publicly owned company in that wider community sense.

Coillte should hold on to its assets. I welcome very much the development of the large wind farm in Galway recently, but I regret that it was sold on. I do not see why Coillte should not build up an asset base of renewable energy projects. Ms Gray mentioned the potential to develop 1,000 MW which would, on its own, bring us a long way towards meeting our 2030 renewable targets as part of a wider strategic plan. It should not be a develop and sell on approach, however. It should be to develop and hold in treasure in the ownership of the Irish people as vested in a State company, Coillte. How we do that without breaking European rules is a matter of being clever but Coillte has the landbank and that is the real asset. The State should be willing to support that and to look at a range of funding mechanisms to make it happen. First and foremost, Coillte is and must remain a forestry company. However, it is a new forestry company. What we need is living, breathing, high-quality, biodiverse, rich, community enhancing forestry everywhere at scale.