Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his nice comments. I am not quite a forester yet. I am still a farmer with some trees but one never knows. The commitments in the programme for Government, and I invite the committee to review them, are ambitious for forestry. We have a forestry model that really is not working for everyone in this country. Currently, it is not working for anyone but it is important that whatever we do from now on aims to achieve those ambitions in the programme for Government.

I did say during the debate on the passage of the Bill through the Seanad and the Dáil that I was eager to set up a new forestry policy group. The inaugural meeting of that group will take place this Thursday. The group is made up of a broad number of stakeholders, including representatives from industry, the environment, agencies, farmers and communities. It is to be hoped that will be the start of how we move forward with this. The group has a great deal of work to do and the first stage is to get everyone engaging with it and to not polarise anybody, which could quite easily happen. I have seen it happen in other groups. Sometimes when we get farmers and environmentalists into a room, unless there is some decent structure to the meeting, it does not last long. I hope to avoid such an occurrence.

I also made a commitment during the debate on the forestry Bill to improve public participation. I referred to a new online forestry view or portal of which I have had the privilege of having a sneak preview. That will be available within the next two weeks. It will open up the public participation element not only for people who want to see where work forestry plans are going but for people to make submissions through it and for applicants to see how their applications are progressing.

On the research we might need as we move forward,I hope the forestry policy group will help in that respect and give direction to me and the Department as to where we should be going with forestry policy in this country. There are some movements and we heard from a representative of Coillte earlier about Coillte nature and that direction. We need more of that type of forestry in Ireland because it has to be appealing to communities at the end of the day. We have seen the dissatisfaction among many. Deputy Carthy referred to it on many occasions in debates he has had with me on it. I am fully aware of that. We have to bring everyone along with us. While we have a slump in forestry currently, I would like to think we can move on from this in a positive, coherent and collective way and I look forward to that.