Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 3 December 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Coillte Annual Report 2018: Discussion

Photo of Jackie CahillJackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

According to the presentation, 53% of plantations are Sitka spruce and the remainder are broadleaf and biodiverse actions. Are there individual sites that are 100% Sitka spruce? We receive complaints about Coillte forests that its plantations are extremely close to dwellings and roadsides. Coillte is planting everything it can at present. In the event of replanting, however, will the prescribed distances from dwellings and roads be honoured?

I was contacted by a man who, unfortunately, has ash dieback on his land. He is a contract client of Coillte. He has 50 ha of ash, which is a significant plantation on which to have dieback. The financial loss will be huge. A mature hectare of ash is worth in the region of €50,000. His complaint is that Coillte is now taking out the diseased trees for him but is replanting with alder which, in his view, will have little, if any, commercial value. While the alder trees will grow quickly, he feels that this is certainly not what he signed up for. He had various reasons for choosing ash and wanted a cash dividend after a certain time to leave to a member of his family with physical difficulties. Leaving that aside, he feels that what has been replanted for him was not what it said on the tin and that he will be left with a plantation of no economic value.

Coillte has stated that it has its own insurance. Does this mean that there is not independent insurance for contract clients in respect of their forests? In light of people's anxiety regarding insurance for forests, will Coillte clarify the position?

Coillte claims that it is happy with the arbitration process relating to its 700 plus clients and that there is general satisfaction with how it is going. I do not get that impression from the people who contact me. There is a view that Coillte is, at the very least, stalling the process, that it seeks further information from clients and that, to date, no arbitration has taken place, even though clients were told that it was due to start in September. Some 30 or 40 are in the pipeline with another 100 waiting to get into the process. What is the timeline for arbitration? How many of Coillte's 700 plus clients have indicated that they will go on the arbitration route with it?

I have also received representations to the effect that clients who have made complaints about contracts are being visited by Coillte staff. In most cases, these clients are elderly individuals. While they have received legal advice, Coillte staff are getting them to sign agreements which bypass the arbitration process and which indicate that everything is hunky-dory. I am not saying this is the case, it is what has been put to me. If it is the case, there are questions to answer. These people are not fully aware of what they are signing and, while I would not say that they are doing so under duress, if it was the case that elderly people were being asked to sign something in the absence of a legal person when they have sought legal advice, that would be a breach of good faith. Will the representatives clarify whether Coillte staff are calling to individual contract holders and getting agreement signed without others being present for the landowners?

Another complaint I have received from people who own land adjacent to Coillte forests is that the company does not have enough staff to maintain boundary fences around its forests and that the fences are, in comparison with the position which obtained some years ago, seriously neglected.

There is not the same level of maintenance. How many staff does Coillte have? I appreciate that it has a serious amount of acreage to cover and that much of it is in quite rough terrain, but Coillte has forests in other parts of the country that are bounded by land which is used for commercial farming. In those cases, there are issues with wildlife and other things damaging fences. Does Coillte have dedicated staff for maintaining the boundary fences relating to its forests?

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