Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 14 September 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Forestry Sector: Discussion (Resumed)

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

The agenda for today is the ongoing issues in the forestry sector. I welcome Mr. Brendan Gleeson, Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; Mr. Colm Hayes, assistant secretary general; Mr. Seamus Dunne, head of the forestry inspectorate; and Mr. Eamon O’Doherty of the Forestry Service, all of whom are joining remotely. They are very welcome to this meeting.

We have received their opening statement, which has been circulated to members and will be published on the Oireachtas website. They will be given ten minutes to make their opening statement before we go to questions and answers.

Before we begin, I have an important notice on 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 on 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. Participants in the committee meeting who are in locations outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that the constitutional protections afforded to those participating from within the parliamentary precincts do not extend to them. No clear guidance can be given on whether or the extent to which participation is covered by the absolute privilege of a statutory nature.

We appreciate Mr. Gleeson taking the time to come before the committee today. This is one in a long series of meetings we have had on forestry. As a committee, we would rather not have all these meetings but we are extremely worried about the forestry sector. I would have to say that we are sceptical of the dashboard in the last two weeks, given the way the figures have increased very substantially. Unfortunately, we have seen in the past that when officials were coming to a committee meeting, the figures for the previous two weeks would be substantially increased. In the eight weeks preceding these two figures, the issuing of licences was at an intolerably low level. A point that I want to make before Mr. Gleeson's opening statement is that even with the improved level of licences issued in the past two weeks, we still only issued 12 afforestation licences this week and five the previous week. In the whole month of August, only 15 afforestation licences were issued. We will struggle to hit 2,000 h of afforestation this year, which has huge implications for the sector going forward. In 25 or 30 years' time, a generation will ask what the hell they were doing in Ireland in 2020 and 2021 and why no trees were planted.

We had a long session this morning on nitrates, the implications of the nitrates directive and what way it is going to affect agri-industry in general. We have a huge opportunity with forestry to tackle climate change and reduce emissions while increasing rural wealth rather than putting it in jeopardy. I know other members will have similar things to say. It is intolerable that our level of afforestation is so low. We have a clear target in the programme for Government which is constantly being missed by 70% to 75%.

It is not out of any ill will that we keep bringing the officials back in before us. We have had the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, and the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, before us on forestry in the last couple of months. We are extremely concerned about the sector.

I was talking to a contractor yesterday evening who says he now has licences but he does not have a workforce. Unfortunately, he was left so long without licences that his truck driver, who would normally carry the timber to the mill, has left him and some of his machine operators have also left him. We know from other sectors that it is very hard to source employees at the moment. They have gone through 12 months where the level of licences issued was at an intolerable level and they found it impossible to keep their workforce together.

We have seen more licences in the last two weeks, but we have seen that before and it has not been maintained. As a committee, we are extremely concerned. We issued a report a couple of months ago with recommendations for the sector and, unfortunately, we see the sector still struggling. That is the context in which we have asked the Secretary General to come here today. It is out of concern for the industry and the plight the industry finds itself in that we asked him to come before us today as a witness. We look forward to his opening statement and there will then be questions from the members. I call Mr. Gleeson.

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