Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will start with a quick-fire round. I have a question for Mr. Murphy. I will not mention the companies involved but am I correct in saying that cut-offs and waste timber left over from a site can be used for different processing or generation activities in Northern Ireland but that the EPA will not grant people in the South licences to use timber in that way?

Mr. McAuley asked why people do not want to get into forestry. He is right. There is a need for commercial operators. The likes of ECC Timber and Murray Timber Group provide employment. We need a certain amount of activity to ensure that we keep jobs in certain areas, such as in Connemara. The problem is that what has gone on has left a bad taste in many people's mouths. We have an estimate at the moment. Will Mr. Hayes tell me what we have not achieved in the last few years? My understanding is that we have 5,000 ha or 6,000 ha less than our target. We are now saying that we will plant 8,000 ha per year. Some 80% of land west of Galway has been designated such that it cannot be planted. One cannot plant in Mayo. Going around the country, where will we get the land? We are living a lie in this room if we believe we are going to achieve something which we will not.

I hope I will be corrected if I am wrong but I have dealt with Departments with regard to people who have bought land from Coillte on which the trees were fit for cutting and in respect of which there was an obligation to plant on raised bog - wet peatland. Can anyone here tell me that one does not have to replant in that situation? The fact is that one has to replant on raised bog.

Some 6% of our countryside is covered in forestry, much of which is broadleaf, planted by farmers and State bodies. Not one bit of this is used in calculating our emissions. What is our Department doing to resolve that issue? Such forestry all over Ireland is excluded from these statistics. Why do we not have schemes for areas of 0.5 acres to 50 acres and an acre to 100 acres? If we want to encourage the planting of broadleaves to reduce net emissions, shelter belts of 30 broadleaf trees could be planted along ditches under an environmental or CAP scheme without interfering with farming. We could plant 60,000 ha in one year. Our big problem is that we do not have the money for it.

Mr. McAuley has asked why farmers are not willing to go down this road. Coillte has partnerships with farmers with which there are problems it has not addressed. Mr. McAuley and I both know that, in the business world, one person tells another who tells another. Coillte says that it is engaging. Engaging is not solving. At one time, when one was sowing timber, it was done on the bad piece of land at the back of the garden or the end of the field. That day is gone now. That will not happen. One has to have a better standard of land. This has left a bad taste in the mouths of many farmers and word spreads. Farmers are becoming reluctant to plant. Mr. Hayes will be familiar with the case of a farmer who has been in forestry for three years. I have contacted him and his people over the last year or 18 months in this regard. This farmer wants to brash trees for access. A licence was given to dig drains. This has been going around in circles. This person who has planted forestry is trying to improve it and the Department has not addressed the problem. People wonder why more people are not going down the road of forestry. How many licences are being stopped by the so-called environmentalists who are going to save the world? How many roads are being blocked? How many areas in which people want to plant trees are being blocked? This in not being addressed. The Derrybrien case has been a problem. We have addressed nothing.