Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The agenda for today is ongoing issues in the forestry sector. I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with responsibility for land use and biodiversity, Senator Pippa Hackett. She is accompanied by the following officials of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Ms Patricia Kelly, head of the forestry division, Mr. Kevin Collins, head of forestry environmental section, and Mr. Eamon O'Doherty, project manager, Project Woodland. They are all joining from a witness room in Kildare House. I welcome them to the meeting and thank them for making time to appear before us during the summer recess.

The opening statement has been circulated to members. All opening statements are published on the Oireachtas website and are publicly available. The Minister of State has ten minutes to make her opening statements before we go to questions and answers.

Before we begin I have an important notice in relation to parliamentary privilege. Witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to the committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence relating to a particular matter and they continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and they are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise nor make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

I again welcome the Minister of State, Senator Pippa Hackett. It just shows the importance that the agriculture committee attaches to the forestry sector. In her opening statement, the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, outlined the many times that the committee has dealt with forestry in the past months. We are seriously worried about afforestation targets and we see weeks where only four or five licences were issued. There is a distinct target in the programme for Government, which I hope the Minister of State will address today.

Another issue which has been raised with me recently is thinning. Is a licence required for thinning? It is not a change of land use. Could thinning not proceed without the necessity of obtaining a licence? That would greatly free up a large number of licences. As the Minister of State is aware, there is a huge number of people involved in the forestry sector who are under huge financial pressure through no fault of their own. With the low output of licences, their businesses have gone into serious financial pressure. I have had contractors on to me who have had machines repossessed by financial institutions and who are facing financial ruin. The Minister of State has addressed ash dieback in her opening statement. That is something I would like to elaborate further on. The Minister of State has made changes recently, which have been welcome, but there needs to be more financial compensation for people who have suffered ash dieback. They have suffered huge financial loss. This committee has made recommendations that the premia would be available to them if they choose to replant that land and that they would again receive premia on that land as they have had no financial gain from the crop they planted previously.

These are just some of the issues and other members of the committee will want to raise other issues with the Minister of State. I now ask her to make her opening statement, and then we will have questions and answers from the committee members.